


Grayson's Thirteen

by Irony_Rocks



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU Animated, Ocean's Eleven (2001), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Team, batfam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 50,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irony_Rocks/pseuds/Irony_Rocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Ocean's Eleven AU:</i> After being released from prison, Dick Grayson meets up with his former partner in crime and close friend Wally West to propose a take down of some of the most notorious, corrupt individuals in the country. Enlisting the help of the extended Wayne family, along with a growing number of people: Barbara Gordon, a hacker and electronics expert; Artemis Crock, a young and talented thief; Kaldur, a reformed con man; Conner Kent, an intimidating boxer; Raquel Ervin, an explosives expert; Zatanna Zatara, a professional Magician; M’gann, a gifted identity forger, and a few more. They’ll assemble a group the likes of which have never come together before. Vigilante justice just got a new brand of con artists and criminals — and one dead man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dick has gotten the visit like clockwork every Saturday for the last four years. The guards recognize Wally by his red hair alone because of the inexcusable routine. This time it’s different. This time, Dick doesn’t wait behind the yellow strip of line; he doesn’t hold for inspections or searches; he doesn’t have to see his visitors behind a plate glass window meant to withstand gunshots. Instead, it’s a quick stop to the front desk to collect some personal belongings – his classic watch, a wallet with a buck-fifty in change, useless credit cards and his driver’s license two years expired – and then he’s being escorted towards the exit by his favorite guard.

“Try not to end up back here,” Eddy tells him.

“You won’t miss me?” Dick says, grinning.

Eddy rolls his eyes. “Kid, I’ve seen a lot of people come through these halls. A lot of assholes, and a lot of dumb idiots. You’re neither, but I swear to god, if you end up back here for another stupid crime—”

“Eddy,” Dick cuts in. “That’s never gonna happen.”

Eddy shakes his head. “They all say that.”

The rest of the journey is done quietly. The moment his sentence was handed down – six years, with possible parole – Dick had imagined this moment a million and one times over. His release. His freedom. A man with skills and brains like him, someone who grew up as the ward to the richest conman alive, it wouldn’t have been impossible for him to break out. Dick had figured out six different ways to do it every year, all different methods, new approaches. Take out a guard there, disrupt the prison’s militaristic schedule mid-day, hitch a ride to the restricted areas through bribery and some acrobatic moves – it was all fairly straightforward, if you knew what you were looking for. Dick did. He always knew. But he bid his time anyway, waited patiently for the years to pass.

He wanted the Grayson name, and to do that, he had to pay for his crimes.

Despite a few rough fights and one altercation that ended up with him in the infirmary with three broken ribs, he’d gotten parole two years early. It’s the price of the game, especially when you go after the richest and most powerful men in the country. Most conmen, most thieves and artists – they all had an expiration date. For some, it meant death, and for others, it was prison. Some lucky bastards actually make it out of the life, clean.

Dick still isn’t sure which one will end him, but it isn’t going to prison. Not again. Not ever.  

Outside, it’s a piercing hot sun that blazes over Gotham Federal Correctional Complex. He squints at it, feeling like he’s never seen something so violently beautiful in his life. Wally is perched against his yellow ‘69 Camaro, wearing a bright red shirt and a pleased grin. They stop before each other, standing feet apart, each assessing the other as if they hadn’t just seen each other the prior week. Dick feels weird in his old clothes, used to prison uniforms. It feels weird, but in a good way.

“So,” Wally says. “What’s first?”

Dick smiles, not even thinking about it. “ _Food._ ”

 

* * *

 

The diner is old, and the waitress is rude, but they have the best burgers in the state and Dick feels like he’s been starved for more than a few decades. For once in eating, he manages to put Wally to shame, a feat that’s extraordinary since the guy’s dietary habits are practically legendary. Wally’s always been like that, ever since they were in high school together and he’d been track champion for three years in a row, breaking records and getting medals. Back then, in high school, things had seemed so simple. So straightforward.

Times had changed.

“How’s Artemis?” Dick asks.

Wally beams. “At her sister’s right now. She’s sorry she couldn’t be here for today, but her sister’s pregnant again and needs some help with Lian. She said to tell you,  _‘way to get traught.’_ ”

Dick snorts. “Roy still on narcotics?”

“Naw, he moved up to Homicide last fall. Didn’t I tell you that?”

Dick shrugs and looks away. Having a cop for one of his oldest friends is an experience, but there tends to be a permanent damper on any friendships when you end up going to prison for robbery and assault. He doesn’t look forward to any reunion with Roy.

“What about M’gann and Conner? Kaldur?”

Wally stares at him, eyebrow lifted. “They’re all fine. Are we really going to do this whole song and dance, or are you just going to spit it out?”

“Spit what out?”

“Asking about the one person you really want to ask about.”

Dick stiffens. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Wally chuckles. “Sure you don’t. Well, then, I’m just going to talk randomly about a certain redhead I know. Likes computers and hacking? Long legs? IQ that’s higher than yours, and she’s funnier too—”

“All right, all right,” Dick cuts in. “I get it.”

Wally pointedly lets silence fall for a long beat.

Dick stands it for as long as he can. “How is Barbara?” he finally grits out, annoyed.

Wally throws an arm back over his chair, smirking. “Barbara is… Babs. You know her. She’s always doing a thousand and one things. She’s good.”

Dick doesn’t comment, because he hadn’t been expecting anything otherwise. Barbara Gordon was always the girl who never felt comfortable showing a weakness, not even if the world was ending around her. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Barbara is the oldest of the group, because she isn’t, but Dick always used to tease her about her mothering. It was one of the things he missed most about Babs, that steadfast and no-nonsense attitude she had, but it certainly wasn’t the thing he missed  _most._

“Did she say anything about me?” Dick asks, despite himself.

Wally looks away, and the silence speaks for itself. Of course, Barbara didn’t say a word. She wouldn’t, because she wasn’t the type. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know today was the day he’d been released. Barbara knew  _everything_. Dick lets the sting of that rejection settle in for a beat, because he can’t blame her, not really, not after how things had gone down when he’d gotten arrested. Not after Jason. Not after what… happened with her legs.

Wally leans forward in his chair, setting elbows on the table in a way that would’ve driven Alfred apoplectic. “Look, I know you just got out, but I need to know what you have planned.”

“I don’t have anything planned.”

“Bullshit,” Wally calls, because he knows Dick too well. “You spent four years in there. Four years with nothing to do but think. I know you said to let it go, that’d you learned the lesson that Bruce never had – to walk away. But I know you, man. Jason’s death isn’t a thing you’re going to forgive. Whatever you have planned, I want in.”

Dick looks away. “You got out of the life, Wally. I’m not going to drag you back in.”

“You’re not dragging me anywhere,” Wally insists. “I’m barging in. Besides, someone’s gotta have your back, and Jason was my friend too. There’s a lot of people back home that would be willing to go to the mat for you. All you gotta do is ask.”

“I’ve got no right to ask anyone for anything.”

Wally stares at him, incredulous. “You took the fall for all of us. You went to prison for four years, for  _all_  of us. Arty and me aren’t the only ones that owe you our livelihood. And—”

“I’m not talking about your livelihood,” Dick cuts in, heatedly. “I’m talking about your  _lives._  The guys I’m after aren’t going to call the police if I get busted. They’ll handle it with crowbars and shotguns. I can’t ask you to risk that.”

“You’re not  _asking._  We’re  _volunteering.”_

Dick sits back in his chair for a long beat, torn. His plan had been to go in alone (mostly), do the whole vigilante justice thing with as little collateral as possible, but admittedly it’s a messy and dangerous plan. After a lifetime of playing on the wrong side of the law, it’s ironic that he’s going to use those same skills to take down some of the most corrupt people in the country, but even he can tell he’s setting himself up for a suicide mission. Maybe, with others’ help, it wouldn’t be so bad.

It’s still going to get dangerous. It could get bloody. Dick can afford that, but the others? The others have things to lose,  _people_  to lose.

“We can protect ourselves,” Wally says.

“Not if they know who you are,” Dick replies. “They get wind of what I have planned, they’ll come after you. After your  _families_ , Wally.”

Wally shrugs. “Then we won’t use our names. We’ll use… codenames, or something. Aliases.”

“Codenames?” Dick repeats, incredulous. “What? Like calling each other _Nightwing_ and _Kid Flash_? Those were high school nicknames, Wally. We were idiot freshman.”

“I got news for you, bro. We might not be freshman anymore, but we’re always going to be idiots.” He grins. “Trust me, Artemis reminds of that everyday.”

Dick’s too serious to share his amusement, at first. There’s a long stretch of silence where Wally just lifts his eyebrow and grins. Despite himself, Dick feels himself getting lighter. The idea of going through this with friends – it’s dangerous, but also heartening. Wally and Artemis are both some of the best people he’s ever worked with, and his network of friends and family includes a host of talented individuals from professional magicians to notorious hackers. He thinks about Barbara, sitting in her hub of computers, glasses perched delicately on her nose – but the image is ruined by the wheelchair. A wheelchair that he’s responsible for, a wheelchair she uses now because one of his missions went horribly, horribly wrong and the cost had been his little brother’s life and his girlfriend’s ability to walk.

After that, did he have the right to lead another team? Did he have the gall?

“It looks like you’ve forgotten our old saying, Dick,” Wally declares. “ _You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us._ Now, what do you have planned, oh fearless leader?”


	2. Chapter 2

 

The Wayne Manor has gone unchanged.

Dick has no idea what he’d been expecting. As far as he knows, the Wayne Estate hasn’t been altered in any way for over five generations, except for a small portion on the East Wing which was covertly remolded during Bruce’s late teenage years. Dick’s former guardian has always been obsessive about security – some might even call  _paranoid_ , if they’re privy enough to know about the Wayne nightlife activities. But Dick always understands and appreciates that those measures are necessary. A man with as many hidden enemies as Bruce?

Paranoia is always well-deserved.

But it’s not Fort Knox, either. Dick enters the mansion with a simple push of the front door, not bothering with the doorbell. This early in the afternoon, the doors are never locked because Alfred and the other servants and gardeners are always going to and fro from the mansion. It’s one of the reasons Bruce keeps his proclivities with cons and crimes exclusive to the East Wing, where things are far, far more secure. The foyer is expansive, elegant and scrupulously clean, full of esoteric furniture and impressive art meant to awe and enrapture visitors. Dick has no such feelings now; instead, it’s with a thick taste of nostalgia and homesickness that he steps across the stone-marbled floor.

“Hello?” he calls out, not wanting to startle Alfred unnecessarily. “Anyone home?”

There are footsteps behind him, and Dick turns, expecting a recognizable face; instead, there’s some kid no older than sixteen or seventeen, wearing a dark black blazer with a Gotham Academy insignia etched over the breast-pocket.

Dick doesn’t recognize him, but apparently recognition goes the other way. “Whoa,” the kid exhales out, in shock. “You’re Dick Grayson.”

Dick shifts under the weight of the heavy words, uncomfortable. There’s more than a little awe in them. “Since I was born, yeah. Uh, where’s Alfred?”

“Getting groceries,” the kid answers automatically, still a little stunned. “You’re seriously Dick Grayson?”

“I thought we already established that.”

“Yeah, no. We did. It’s just—man, what are you doing here? Did you—whoa, did you get out? Does Bruce know? Did you  _break out_?”

“Whoa, kid. Hold those damn horses on your imagination! I got  _paroled.”_

The kid blinks, nodding. “Oh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

Dick stares at him. “Yeah. Glad you think so.”

Silence descends as both stare at each other. Dick feels like he should know this kid, or anyone, really, that’s roaming through the halls of the Wayne Manson as freely as if they own them. But it just reminds him that it’s been years since he stepped foot in this place, and longer even since he was actually welcomed. Things ended rough between him and Bruce a year before he’d been thrown in prison. Still, he’d been hoping to put some of that aside now. But for reasons he can’t even articulate, the presence of this kid throws Dick and he feels off kilter already. And he’s barely even stepped foot in the place.

“Forgive the Boy Wonder,” a female voice breaks the silence, mocking. Dick turns around to spy a blonde-haired girl around the same age as Tim, as she says, “he’s too busy hero-worshiping to remember his manners. His name is Tim Drake. And I’m Stephanie. She’s Cassie.”

“Who?” Dick questions, bewildered by the mention of a third name.

“The girl behind you,” Stephanie answers, smugly.

He turns around, then jerks in shock to find a dark-haired Asian girl inches behind him; she’d managed to sneak up behind Dick without making the slightest noise, and it’s a move that’s a hard to do, especially considering how ridiculously good Dick had gotten in prison with detecting people at his back; it’d been a necessary survival skill.

“Um, yeah,” Dick stammers out, awkward.  _What the hell are high school kids doing hanging out at Bruce’s place?_   “I’m here to see Bruce. Or Alfred.”

“They’re both out,” Tim answers, helpfully. “Bruce is on business in China, and Alfred is—”

“Getting groceries,” Dick completes, sighing. “Yeah, you said.”

The sting of rejection blooms in his chest. China or freakin’  _Mars_ , Bruce would have still made it his business to know when Dick was being released. He’d chosen to be out of the country  _purposefully_ , and what’s worse, it’s highly likely he hadn’t informed Alfred of his release either. The gesture smacks of old resentment, or maybe even some of that painful stoic bullshit that Bruce is so well-known for. Dick clenches his hands into fists, but tries to keep aloof on the surface.

“Well,” he says, attempting to remain whelmed, “Tell Alfred I stopped by. He’ll want to see me.”

“Wait, you’re not leaving, are you?” Tim asks.

Stephanie snorts. “What do you want? His autograph?”

“This is his place too,” Tim argues against her.

“Not really, kid,” Dick says, automatically, before he registers the words fully and narrows his eyes. “And what do you mean,  _too_? You live here?”

Tim nods. Dick looks stunned across to confirm the same of Stephanie and Cassie, and the latter hasn’t even said a word the entire time, but he can feel the judgmental vibes of  _isn’t it obvious?_  emanating from all three teenagers. Suddenly, Dick has a headache.

“Right,” he declares, and he’s already heading to the door. “Tell you what? I’ll try back later.”

“Hey, wait—”

But Dick is already gone.

* * *

 

Wally will never admit this to Artemis, but he hates Gotham City.

As he makes his way across the street to the auto-garage he and Artemis set up two years ago, he slips on some shades and ignores the bale of pollution rising from the eastern river where the factories spew out fumes from thick chimneys full of toxic waste. The air reeks in this part of the city. Everything seems to be so dark in Gotham, so gritty and dirt-rimmed. He grew up in Central City, which is by no means the most spotless city in America, but in comparison to Gotham, everything has a luster.  _Everything._

When he was little, or even when he was a punk-nosed teenager, he dreamt about moving to a bigger city and living it up. In some ways, things worked out better than fantasy because he got Artemis out of the deal, and if he’s honest with himself, snagging a gorgeous, smart, kickass girl like her was so far beyond expectation that he hadn’t even dreamt of it, not even in his wildest dreams. What she sees in him, he’ll never know, but Wally isn’t going to be the one to inform her she can do better. But Gotham? Gotham City is many things, but fantasy-material is not on the list, not unless your fantasies had a habit of turning into nightmares.

This city is dirty and busy, and  _mean_. His junior year of high school, when Artemis and Wally started looking at colleges together, he’d picked out places on the west coast, hoping to get Artemis away from the city that had raised her as a misfit under her father’s tutelage. It wasn’t like he was one to throw stones; he’d grown up with his own daddy issues, but Artemis’ life as a kid was different. Like he said,  _meaner_. They went to college in California, where – okay, Artemis-in-a-bikini wasn’t as regular a highlight in his life as he’d been hoping – but it was still awesome. Then time came to graduate, and then her mom got sick, and Jade needed extra family support to help take care of the litter of kids she kept spitting out, all red-haired and blue-eyed (the munchkins had Roy’s looks, all three of them, with a fourth on the way). The move to Gotham had been inevitable.

Still, there are days when it isn’t so bad. The quiet two-bedroom apartment they have is in one of the better parts of the city, and it isn’t like people thought to mess with them. Wally may have been a big, broad-shouldered guy, but it’s Artemis who has the reputation. Not many people are brave enough to get on her bad side. As a regular offender himself, Wally knows how scary she can get. It’s been years since they’ve gotten into any real scraps, though.

After things had gone sideways in that last mission, and people had gotten arrested and hurt and killed – Artemis and Wally agreed: it was time to leave the life. Four years later, and they haven’t gotten so much as a speeding ticket. (Okay, that’s a lie. Wally has nearly two dozen, but driving fast – doing  _anything_  fast – is one of his weaknesses.) Point is, even if they’ve talked about it, even if they’ve agreed on helping Dick in this one last take-down, Wally would be lying if he says he isn’t nervous. The idea of returning to that life, where Artemis could get hurt the same way that Barbara had – or, god, Jason – it’s scary. It’s beyond scary. Wally can’t handle breathing without her. He can’t even sleep on those nights she works a late shift. He’s too used to her breathing beside him, and anyway, it’s not like they’re getting any younger. It’s these thoughts that chase after him like demons as he makes his way across the garage.

He finds Artemis working the guts of some old Chevy parked in the third lot. Her long, toned legs stick out from underneath, quite the fetching sight since she’s wearing jean shorts and a shirt that’s tied off to show her stomach. It’s a sweltering 96 degrees outside, and the soldering job that Jamie is doing nearby with the torch probably isn’t helping the matter, but he feels a little possessive about the fact that other guys get to see his girlfriend like this – before he remembers to keep such thoughts to himself. He doesn’t want Artemis to introduce him to the latest move she taught her community kids in that self-defense class she instructs every Thursday. Those snot-nosed kids use him as a punching bag enough, already.   

“Babe?” Artemis says, without even looking out from under the car.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“I could feel myself being ogled,” she offers, wryly.

He grins, wolfishly. “Can’t help it. I’m helpless against those shorts.”

“You’re helpless against a lot of my clothes,” she remarks idly.

“In my defense, I’m helpless against the sight of you  _naked_  as well.”

She laughs, finally rolling herself out from under the car. She’s a mess, with motor oil smudging her face and staining her long blonde hair; she still manages to make the look work. “Where’s Dick?” she asks, looking a little disappointed.

“I tried to get him to swing by, but he insisted on visiting Bruce and Alfred first.”

She tries to hide it, but a wince makes itself known. “Oh,” she only replies, getting up. She brushes herself off, then motions for him to join her before she leads the way to her office in the back. They pass by Jaime Reyes, who's working a blowtorch on a cherry-red convertible, and Wally nods at the neighborhood kid because he’s one of Wally’s favorites. “Boss,” Jaime greets back, waving.

“So,” Artemis says, when they’re alone and she closes her door. “How’d it go?”

Wally doesn’t beat around the bush. “We’re in.”

The moment falls into silence, both just staring at each other. The gravity of the moment isn’t to be underappreciated, because even though they both knew it was coming, had both _insisted_  on getting in, now that Dick’s agreed to it… well, it marks the point of no return. She walks up to Wally, and with a serious pucker to her lips, slides her hands around his neck. He grips her around the waist. Even though he can span the width of her back with one stretch of his hand, a girl that’s as sexy and lithe as she is ferocious, today all it does is remind him how slight she is, how breakable those bones must be. She’s only human, and they’re reinserting themselves into a dangerous game. 

“What’s the plan?” she asks him.

“Dick has a list. It’s bigger than we thought. I think we’re gonna need ten guys. Possibly more. We thought up a few names already.”

Artemis sighs. “Who?”

“Just some notes. It’s all preliminary.”

The notes are literal. There’s one in his back-pocket, and Artemis must’ve guessed at it because before Wally can react, she’s swiped the paper from his jeans. She pinches his ass once for good measure and he gives a quick yelp. He may be one of the fastest drivers in all the east coast, a daredevil behind a car and the best getaway man known alive, but when it comes to pick-pocketing and stealing, no one has moves faster than his girlfriend.

“Conner and M’gann?” Artemis questions, reading down the list. “That’s going to be awkward since they broke up.”

“We need both of them,” Wally insists. “We need everyone on that list, or someone with comparable skill sets. Can you think of anyone better?”

Artemis remains quiet for a beat, debating. He’s memorized the list already: besides Conner, who’s an intimidating boxer – a near contender, in fact, in the heavy-weight championship three years back – and M’gann, who’s as gifted an actress as any Hollywood starlet to grace the silver screen, there’s a whole host of curious names on that paper. There’s Zatanna, a professional Magician and one of (but not the  _only_ ) Dick’s exes; Also, there’s Raquel Ervin, an explosives expert who even on one of her more charitable days still manages to scare the ever-living bajeezes out of Wally.

Artemis continues to read the list, eyes widening. “You’re going to ask Kaldur for help? Isn’t that a little  _cruel_ , considering one of the men we’re going after is his  _father_?”

Wally grimaces, scrubbing a hand across the back of his neck. Everyone knows it: Kaldur has been out of the game for almost as long as Wally and Artemis, but unlike them, his reasons are a bit more complicated. He’s a reformed con man from Atlanta, whose family ties to a mob boss named Black Manta can prove to be a can of worms.

“It’s Dick’s call,” Wally says, with a helpless shrug.

“Dick and I need to have a  _talk_ ,” Artemis fumes, a little incredulous. Then her eyes drift to the last name on the list. “Oh, hell. Barbara Gordon?” She slaps the note back towards Wally, thrusting it against his stomach with enough impact that he goes  _oomph_ , declaring, “I didn’t know Dick waited out four years in prison just to come out and sign up immediately for his  _funeral_.”


	3. Chapter 3

Barbara Gordon stares at her watch, frowning.   
  
Her date is late, and Jason Bard has only ever been late to one of their dinners when he’s so caught up with his work at Gotham PD that he’s forgotten all about the time. It’s one of the things they share in common, but Barbara finds it less endearing when she feels stood up, the minutes unfolding to nearly half an hour. She leaves another text for Jason, and orders a second drink from the waiter. The restaurant surrounding her is expensive and dimly lit. The tables curl into a maze of dark buttery leather, and the pricing for the wine list tops off in the thousands. She has no idea why Jason is splurging tonight on such expenses, but she’s not in the mood. She only came because the reservations had taken three weeks to get a hold of, but the truth is, Barbara is as far from a romantic mood tonight as imaginable.   
  
The _maître d_ ' has long since untucked the chair rimming her table for two to accommodate her bulky wheelchair, but it’s a tight fit and Barbara instinctively scopes out the exits and memozises the layout.   
  
It’s that reason, mainly, that when a voice pops up behind her, Barbara startles in suprise. “Hey, Barbara.”  
  
She smiles. “You’re improving your skills, Jason. I didn’t hear you walk up—” she turns around, and stops short.  
  
Dick Grayson is standing behind her, wearing a form-fitting suit with a blue shirt that’s unbuttoned at the collar. Tall, toned, maybe even with a bigger build than she last saw him – and Dick has never been a slouch in the muscles department - he looks as terribly handsome as she’s ever seen him. His hair is sleeked back, combed properly for once, and he has that effervescent grin on his face that’s entirely too familiar and warm. For a beat, Barbara doesn’t speak. Hell, she can’t even breathe. She knew of his release, a thing that had been plaguing her all day, but she hadn’t been expecting a visit. Not this bold. Not this soon.  
  
Honestly, in retrospect, she should have known better.  
  
“What are you doing here?”  
  
“I’m out.”  
  
“You’re out?” she repeats, in a stiff tone.   
  
“Of prison,” he elaborates, lightly.  
  
“Yeah, I gathered.”  She attempts to control her voice. It betrays her when she has to take a second to breathe, to remember the process is even necessary. “I knew about your parole hearing probably before you did,” she informs. “I meant what are you doing _here_?  In this restaurant?”  
  
“I heard this place had ambiance and I wanted to enjoy my first night out.”  
  
“Funny,” she remarks, unamused.   
  
“I’m a funny guy,” Dick answers, shrugging.  
  
He’s staring down at her, eyes hooded under a false brim of amusement, and he slips into the seat opposite of her like the candle-lit dinner for two had been set with him in mind. But she knows him too well, and the ease is an act; it figures perfectly that he’d pop in to say hello to her on a date meant for another man, because the act is intended to give the illusion that he doesn’t care or isn’t intimidating by the presence of any other man in her life. In reality, it does the opposite. Reeking of territorialism, it only reminds Barbara of the fact that long before they’d been a couple, jealously had just been another one of the many things they had always been stubborn about denying.   
  
“It’s good to see you, Babs.”  
  
She wishes she could say the same. “What do you want, Dick?”  
  
“Well, that’s a complicated question. I want a lot of things. Been craving a hot dog from Gotham Central Park. I could use two or three new suits; the old ones are little tight around the shoulders, I’m finding. I also need a hacker, and I figure that you’re still the person to see about that. But mostly? What I want?”  
  
“Yes, let’s get into the innermost desires of Dick Grayson,” Barbara offers, wryly. “I’m waiting with baited breath.”  
  
“You,” he declares bluntly, catching her off-guard. “I’m here for you, Babs. I’m here to get you  _back._ ”  
  
The words leave her stricken. He’s never been a man to beat around the bush, at least when it comes to his feelings for her. It’s one of the things she misses most about him. But– “I can’t,” she tells him. “Whatever speech you have revised in your head, stop. I’m not—”  
  
“It’s not a speech,” he cuts in. Then pauses, a little sheepish. “Okay, maybe I _did_ rehearse it a few times. Had some free time lately, or didn’t you hear?”  
  
“Only four years,” she remarks.  
  
“So I may have thought about this moment once or twice. Or a few million times. Just in passing.”  
  
“And ' _hey, Barbara'_ was the best opener you could come up with?”  
  
“Touché,” he laughs. “But you have to admit, it got the job done. You look good, by the way. Did I say that already?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Well, you do,” he tells her, dropping his voice into an intimate hush. “You really look good.”  
  
They stare at each other. Thing is, so does he. And she knows he’s paying more than just platitudes to her. She’s dressed to the nines in a deep rich red dress, and even though she’d dressed like this for Jason, red has always been Dick’s favorite color. The unintentional favor doesn’t do a thing for her own self-image, though. The wheelchair suddenly seems to be a self-conscious point of contention, and she hates that one brief meeting with Dick can have her back-sliding so much. She isn’t ashamed of her handicap, not anymore, and she long ago let go of her petty insecurities about the wheelchair. But with Dick, it feels different. She looks at him, and thinks of who she used to be, vibrant and agile and always on the go. She looks at him, and remembers with startling clarity everything she lost. Not just the use of her legs, but  _him_.   
  
“You left,” she says.  
  
It’s only two words, but the accusation lands hard because Dick flinches as if she’d struck him. “I had to,” he tells her, voice choked. The carefree act drops like a ton of bricks. “I had to go after them, Babs.”  
  
It’s the same damnable fight they’ve been having for four years now.  
  
“No, no, you didn’t, Dick. I  _needed_  you. I needed you to help me get through the roughest period of my life. I couldn’t walk; my life was ripped from me, and instead – instead, you went off half-cocked on a revenge spree.  _You left me._  The last four years, we could have been together. But you left me in a hospital two days after my spine was shattered. Do you have any idea what that did to me?”  
  
His face is tight with restrained emotion, but more than enough slips into his voice. “They needed to pay for what they did to you and Jason.”  
  
“They didn’t, though, did they?” She tries to keep her breath even, settling back in her chair, eyes watering. “The only ones who paid were  _us._ ”  
  
“I’m sorry,” he exhales out, roughly. “God, Babs, you have no idea how sorry I am.”  
  
She closes her eyes; reminds herself that she needs to be firm. She  _needs_  to be strong. “I don’t want your apology, Dick. Four years ago, I begged you to stay. Now, I’m asking you to leave. If you ever had any real feelings for me, any genuine ones, then walk away. I’ve rebuilt my life. I’ve moved on. Now that you’re out, you should do the same.”  
  
He smiles, roughly. “I can’t. Not until things get set right.”  
  
The words are ominous and familiar, and it tells her that her greatest fears are true. He got out, but he’s still living in the past, still trying to move pieces around like a chessboard to get at the men that ruined their lives. It’s with a sharp burn of pain that she realizes he’ll probably never move on. Four years, and he’s still locked in that one fateful moment, watching her and Jason as the rope broke and they had gone plummeting down to the ground.  
  
“Do you want to know what your problem is, Dick?”  
  
“I’ve only got one?”  
  
“You’ve met too many people like you. I’m with Jason Bard now. He doesn’t break the law. He upholds it.”  
  
“Roy’s partner?” Dick shakes his head. “What does he think about your hacking?”  
  
“Your sources are out of date. I’ve gone legit. I do consulting work with fortune five hundred companies and the government now. I test their security. It pays triple what we used to get for breaking in.”  
  
He nods, lips pressed into a thin line. “You sound like your life is perfectly set up. Just tell me this, then. Does the highly decorated Detective Jason Bard make you laugh like I did?”  
  
She pauses for a beat, then admits, rather painfully, “At least he doesn’t make me cry.”

* * *

  
  
Throwing the kickstand down and cutting off the engine, Artemis looks around the neighborhood full of white-picket fences and perfectly groomed lawns, and fights back a shudder.   
  
The roaring engine from her Harley-Davidson was loud enough to disturb one of the neighbors into pushing aside a lace-patterned curtain to glare out at Artemis. She merely pulls off her helmet, waves mockingly at them, and smirks. She doesn’t plan on staying in the suburbs long because she can’t stand the place. When Wally gave her the  _recruiting-M’gann_  job, Artemis had been excited about seeing her old friend, but that was before she realized it meant a trip to hell – otherwise known as the suburban heights of Gotham City. There’s only so much fakeness Artemis can stand before she’ll be reaching for some weaponry. It’s no place for a girl like Artemis. But M’gann? M’gann may have come from a humble background not much unlike Artemis – growing up as the unwanted child in a rough neighborhood, often teased or ignored – but the two women are as different as night and day. Still, somehow, they’re as close as sisters.  
  
Nevertheless, Artemis  _really_  hates coming here. She sticks out like a sore thumb, while M’gann blends in with the high society types in the area effortlessly.   
  
But that’s only because M’gann can blend in  _anywhere_.   
  
Born Megan Morse, but later changing her name to M’gann to add a bit of an exotic flare to her persona, it’s hard for Artemis to describe one of her oldest friends. Because that’s precisely M’gann’s gift – a grifter, who can adapt and beguile any mark and can slip into any role. Artemis has seen M’gann portray a dozen different personalities in the span of a week, all different backgrounds, all different accents. Throw on a new wig, add some layers of make-up, and even Artemis sometimes has trouble spotting M’gann in a crowd. She’s also one of the best cold-readers in the game, able to spot a lie and read a mark with nothing more than a few micro-expressions to go on. As a grifter, she has more aliases than most women have pairs of shoes.   
  
Ironically, M’gann’s attempts to make a career as a Broadway actress have lead to nothing but failures. It’s one of those things about the “real world” that Artemis will just never understand, because a talent like M’gann’s? How can anyone not recognize it?  
  
“Artemis!” M’gann squeals, opening the front patio door to her three-story picturesque house. “You’re here!”  
  
Before Artemis can brace for impact, she finds herself locked in a tight hug that almost cuts off air and circulation. M’gann has always been freakishly strong for such a slight woman.   
  
“Hey, M’gann,” Artemis laughs. “Long time, no see.”  
  
“Come in, come in! I just made some fresh apple pie. No Wally?”  
  
“Not this time,” Artemis replies, purposefully vague. “He had something else to do.”  
  
M’gann nods, not asking for details, and Artemis releases a breath as she follows M’gann up the patio and into the house. The awkward truth is that Wally is driving a few hours up the coast to recruit M’gann’s ex-boyfriend, Conner Kent, and it’s a detail that Artemis would prefer to avoid explaining.   
  
They spend a few minutes catching up, gossiping and laughing a little as they trade stories. It’s been a few weeks since they’ve seen each other – no, maybe even longer. A few months? God, how had they gone so long? Artemis feels a little guilty, but sometimes that’s how life unfolds. So busy doing the day-to-day stuff that old connections sometimes get hard to maintain. It isn’t until M’gann pulls out the second tray of home-baked cookies that Artemis starts waving the white flag.  
  
“I’m not Wally,” she reminds M’gann, declining the cookies with a laugh. “I can’t eat that much!”  
  
M’gann sighs, reluctantly setting down the tray. “All right, but you’re going to have to take home some of this stuff for Wally.”  
  
Artemis nods. “He might have kicked me out of the apartment if I didn’t return with some of your food.”  
  
“So, how’re things? I get the feeling this isn’t strictly a social call.”  
  
Getting down to business makes Artemis sigh heavily. “You’re not wrong. M’gann, this is about Dick.”  
  
M’gann doesn’t do anything as understandable as frown, or wince, or even freeze in unease. A girl as skilled as maintaining a façade as her, she’d never do anything that obvious. Dick’s tale is well-known to anyone in the grifter business, a cautionary tale of how things can go wrong. He’d gone after three of the most powerful men in the country – Lex Luthor, Black Manta, and Vandal Savage – and he’d lost everything.   
  
M’gann hadn’t been involved in the operation that had gone wrong, but she’d been close enough to those involved that she knew details that few others did. Like, how it was Jason that had gone off-book and changed the script in the middle of a live-con. And how, for a few days after that fateful fall that claimed Jason’s life and left Barbara paralyzed, Dick had gone rogue; a spattering of men responsible for the bloody incident had turned up beaten at various police stations across the east coast, and every single one of them had willingly confessed. To this day, Artemis doesn’t know what Dick threatened them with to get them to cooperate like that, and she doesn’t want to know. All she knows is that as much as he tried, Dick never got anywhere close to the big three names on the list. At least not before he landed in the Big House.  
  
Artemis prefers not to think back on those days. It brings about too many bad memories. But they don’t have the luxury of blissful ignorance anymore.   
  
“We’re going to finally take the three down,” M’gann says, like she’s reading Artemis’ mind.  
  
Except by her tone, it isn’t so much of a question. The self-inclusion is also heartening, like there was never any doubting M’gann’s involvement. Artemis doesn’t even need to ask. It’s one of the things that comes from growing up in such a tight-knit group. They’d grown up as a team, a group of about eight of them. All of them had rough childhoods and bad pasts. They’d come together and pulled off missions and cons that became legendary.   
  
But they’d all scattered across the country the last few years, gone their own separate ways and grown apart the way people usually do.   
  
“It’s going to get messy,” Artemis warns, because she feels the need to.  
  
M’gann doesn’t bat an eyelash. “Yes, it is,” she declares, firmly.  
  
Even if she’s amiable and sunshine bright, M’gann can also be one of the most unflinching con artists a person will ever meet. There are so many instances in which she’s a walking contradiction, because even though they are all unflinching, M’gann has this hidden calculating nature that makes her almost more scary than her hot-headed, muscled-up ex-boyfriend. (And Conner can put a man’s face through a brick wall.) Everyone knows it: M’gann is the one person you never want to cross.  
  
Artemis reaches for an empty glass, which had cooled lemonade before, and without a word, M’gann retreats and returns instead with hard liquor. The girls share a smile, and pour a glass each.  
  
“To a call to arms and old friends,” M’gann toasts, “and honor among thieves.”  
  
“Here, here,” Artemis returns, draining her glass. 

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

The place is a dive, but Wally hadn’t been expecting otherwise.  
  
Despite the rundown back roads, Wally parks his old ‘69 yellow Camaro in the corner parking lot where he has to wedge it between two souped up cars worth at least sixty grand each. The place looks to be packed-full based on the parking lot alone. Off in the distance, he can hear the thrum of a boisterous crowd and the nightlife kicking up a storm. These unofficial boxing matches always draw a curious mix of the affluent and criminal – sometimes both in one. His own car looks like a relic among the pristine row of expensive foreign makes, but he’s always been one to appreciate a classic American beauty. It may be one of the older cars on the lot, maybe even the _oldest_ , but it can take any competition on the roads hands down. Wally would bet his life on it.  
  
Still, as he makes his way through the rough crowds this evening, gathering around the dirt-floor factory that smells of sweat and blood, he isn’t planning on making that bet tonight because he’s fairly sure someone would take him up on it. Literally. The crowd is mostly cutthroat and mean, spotted only occasionally with the rich and decadent and pretty. A handful of these clubs have popped up in the northeast lately, and it's grabbed headlines and led to particularly swift crackdowns by law enforcement. But new fights are hosted once or twice every month, anyway. You just had to know the right people to get in, and Wally is the type to know _all_ types of people including the right and the wrong. In the fall, he heard about a club just outside Jersey, one that led to a 16-year-old boy’s death. Wally hates places like these, and he hates it even more that Conner has fallen in among them.   
  
Conner used to be a contender for the heavyweight championships. He used to be a name that brought about a lot of buzz and press. Then he took a few too many concussive blows to the head and nearly died after one brutal fight. The docs diagnosed him with a condition that banned him from further official competition. One more blow to the head and a nasty concussion, the doctors warned, could end up killing Conner. It isn’t a guaranteed thing, but it could happen at any moment, during any fight. Except it’s a warning that’s gone heedless. Conner was raised an orphan and built to be a fighter. He’s never known anything else. After the insurance companies refused to back him anymore and his name dropped from the headlines, he was blacklisted from the legitimate fights. These dives are the only places that will take him, anymore.  
  
“Did you hear?” he overhears someone yell in the crowd. “The Superboy is going to be fighting a _girl_ tonight!”  
  
Wally winces, approaching the side of the ring. He can see the girl now, no older than seventeen or eighteen, standing in the corner. She has a slender yet muscular build, with blue eyes and long blonde hair with unkempt bangs. Her hair runs long down her back, and she has on a black headband and a matching sleeveless top with two stylized golden W’s on it. It’s not that he doesn’t think a girl can hold her own in a fight; Artemis would kick his ass three ways from Sunday just for thinking that. But he’s seen the force of Conner’s hit, and he wouldn’t want an elephant on the receiving end of that, much less this teenager.   
  
He can hear the bookies taking bets, can smell the harsh stench of beer and various bodily fluids on the floor, and the roar and laughter of the crowd drowns out the announcer’s call. Then he sees Conner standing in the opposite corner, arguing with one of the bookies. It looks heated, and Wally approaches close enough to catch snippets of the conversation.  
  
“You never said anything about a girl,” Conner is yelling, just to be heard above the mob.  
  
“You fight her, or you fork over the money you owe,” the bookie warns, snarling. “This ain’t no charity club. Beside, don’t underestimate this girl. She’s kicked the ass of every other guy she’s faced already. You fight, or you get a beating. One way or another, that’s how it’s going down tonight. Your choice about whether it goes down in a ring or outside it.”  
  
Wally knows a threat when he hears one. He’s about to step in and make a play when Conner clenches his fists and turns around. To Wally’s surprise, he goes straight toward the ring, which is this pathetic boxed framed matt with dusty red ropes lining it. He climbs into the ring, looks across the floor to his competition, and nods. The girl doesn’t flinch, which is a feat of miraculous courage as far as Wally is concerned. The announcer calls out the names – Conner Kent verses Cassie Sandsmark – and the fight begins.   
  
It’s brutal to watch, but not for the reason Wally thought. It seems, even if he willingly stepped into the ring, Conner can’t seem to bring himself to hit the Sandsmark girl. He takes hit after hit, and braces himself like he’s going to swing out, but his fist never once connects with her body in any real manner. She, on the other hand, doesn’t hold back. Fast and furious, and surprisingly strong, she turns out to be one of the better fighters that Wally has ever seen. All in all, the fight is over in a matter of minutes. She twists her body away from his and then roars back with a punch so hard Wally feels like he can sense vibrations in the air off it. Conner takes the hit to the face and goes down, and then it’s a fast ten-count.  
  
For a few blinding seconds, after the match is called and Cassandra is declared a winner, Conner remains motionless on the floor. Wally fights his way through the crowd. He sees the girl throw a concerned look at Conner, but then she’s being swept up and away by the announcer. Wally reaches Conner’s side just as he comes back to consciousness. The groan that escapes his friend’s lips is painful, but Wally still releases a breath of relief because for a beat he’d feared the worst.  
  
“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” Wally mutters under his breath, not intending anyone to hear it. Not even Conner.  
  
“Wally?” Conner says, blinking back in confusion. Blood trickles into his right eye, and people from the crowd are lobbing obscenities at him for the poor showing. “What are you doing here?  
  
“C’mon,” he says, gripping Conner by the shoulders and pulling him to his feet. “Let’s get you out of here.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Conner is a mess, and Wally’s not just talking about the bruises.   
  
As Wally goes about cleaning him up, the crowd dies down as dawn approaches on the horizon. They’re one of the last people in the joint. Wally would be lying if he said he wasn’t rethinking his options. Conner isn’t in the best place right now. He isn’t in top form, and even if he were, it only takes a few minutes of company for Wally to see his friend is in a bad place emotionally as well as physically. Conner being hot-tempered and emotionally closed off isn’t a new thing. In fact, that’s par for the coarse. But Wally can sense that there’s more to it than that. For the last three years, ever since losing his chance at the championships and breaking up with M’gann, Conner’s life has been on the roads to shambles. Now, Wally wonders if it’s not permanently parked there for residence.   
  
“What are you doing here, Wally?” Conner asks.  
  
Wally thinks about deflecting; he thinks, guiltily, about making up some story so he doesn’t drag Conner into a worse hell than he’s already in. Instead, ringing out the washcloth into a bowl of pink-stained water, he smiles widely and says, “What? Can’t just swing by to see an old friend?”  
  
Conner remains silent, but they’ve known each other for over a decade. He may not show it, always emotionally neutral on the surface, but he can read Wally just as easily as Wally can read him. “I look that bad, huh?” Conner says. “You’re not even gonna offer me the job you came all the way up here to pitch to me?”  
  
Wally licks his lips. Few people know that Dick’s been released from prison, so it makes sense that Conner can’t immediately make the connections of the specifics. But a job. Of course he’d guess there’s a job.  
  
Before Wally can say anything, the side-door slams open. The bookie from earlier, the one he’d seen Conner arguing with, strides through with four guys at his back. Two of them have guns. “You threw that fight!” the bookie snarls. “You didn’t take one real hit at her! You think we’re dumb? You think we wouldn’t notice? How much you get paid to take a dive like that?”  
  
Conner stands, his full frame and height still intimidating even if he is worse for wear. But Wally has other ideas. He grabs the table at the side and flings it over, causing a distraction, then tugs Conner alongside him as he makes a break for the back exit. He has no doubt Conner would have been willing to take on all five guys at once, and Wally would have jumped in to help, of course. But when the gunfire starts flying and Wally and Conner duck as the bullets hit the plaster wall above their heads, Wally’s glad that he’s smart enough to know when it’s better to run.  
  
“Get in!” Wally screams, reaching his yellow Camaro.   
  
Conner doesn’t argue. The thugs spill out of the factory just in time for Wally to key the engine and book it out of the parking lot. Gunfire erupts after them, but mostly the aim is wide. He takes one – maybe two – hits to the frame of his car, but Wally’s first thought is, _oh, man, Artemis is going to kill me. That’s the third paint job this year!_   
  
“They’re coming after us!” Conner warns.  
  
“I’d like to see them try,” Wally taunts, with a grin.   
  
He shifts into a higher gear, and the tires screech, dirt mushrooming around them as the car zooms down the road in a yellow blur. Jaime recently upgraded Wally’s sweet ride to host a lovely amount of neat modifications; the kid is a wiz and a genius when it comes to anything mechanical, a near Rembrandt of automobiles. He added a 4.10 Positraction rear end, a stronger front stabilizer, and a heavy-duty 4-core aluminum radiator. The engine is also a piece of priceless art, as far as Wally is concerned. It’s famed for its incredible 900horse power, holding a record 1/4th mile time at just nine seconds flat.  
  
Wally grips the steering wheel and swerves, and then there’s an ugly car chase after that, involving three chasing vehicles, all muscled up and heavy duty. Despite the only one in the game with an aging classic, Wally leaves them all in the dust after a few blocks expertly driving through back alley roads and weaving through dimly lit industrial districts. They finally make a clean getaway when they cross through a park and wait under an overpass while the thugs overshoot them in their haste.   
  
Wally kills the engine, plunging them into silence. “So,” he says lightly, and he’s reached a decision; Conner might not be in the best place right now, which, really, means a change of scenery can only help, not _hurt._ “Just like old times, huh?”  
  
Conner looks away. “I’m sorry I dragged you into that.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it. But, uh, can you explain to Artemis why there’s bullet holes in my car? My girlfriend scares me.”  
  
But Conner is already staring stoically out the window at nothing, doing that brooding thing again. “I actually thought for a minute I could do it. That I could fight against a teenaged girl in a ring where there are no rules. God, what the hell? I hate those matches. I hate everything about them.”  
  
Wally nods. “I got a job for you, then. Something where you won’t feel guilt about any resulting violence.”  
  
Conner shakes his head. “After all that, you still want me in on anything you got planned?”  
  
Wally shrugs. “If you can't rely on friends, who can you rely on?”  
  
Conner frowns, warning, “I’m not the… same as I used to be. I’m not in the same condition.”  
  
Wally waves that away like he hadn’t even noticed. “Neither is the Mona Lisa. It’s still considered priceless. You in, man? We could use your help.”  
  
“Like you even need to ask.”  
  


* * *

  
  
When Artemis returns to the garage with M’gann in tow, it is shortly after two in the morning. She can hear Jaime and Wally’s cousin shouting in the back as they play _Call of Duty_ , and she rolls her eyes as she tells M’gann to stow her stuff in the corner. The kids that work at her garage are always here until late in the night, but Jaime and Bart practically live here. On some days, she’s had to kick them out and force them to go to school in the morning like some unspoken guardian. Sometimes, Artemis has trouble figuring out how she and Wally became the unwitting surrogate parents to a group of roughhousing boys and girls, but everyone in the old neighborhood thinks of them that way. Kids often arrive at their doorsteps, fresh off the streets, often in dire shape. Some of them are just trying to get out of the gang-life. Parents know the garage is a safe place to hang out after school. And drug dealers, pimps, and gangbangers – they all know to avoid a run in with either Artemis or Wally.  
  
It isn’t what Artemis originally intended. She’d gone to college with the intention of making something of the degree, but when she’d been summoned back to Gotham because of an aging mother and a sister who needed a helping hand, she’d found herself unintentionally taking up a cause. A call to arms, even – one that many considered hopeless. The kids in the crummy Gotham neighborhoods aren’t bad; they just have a lot stacked against them. Wally and Artemis can sympathize with that. More so, they can relate and help.   
  
So before she knew it, they’d built a life here with a big extended family. She frowns when she thinks about that being in jeopardy.   
  
But the thing with Dick is worth the risk, hopefully. She goes to the back, passing by Bart and Jaime and their blaring video game, and only warns them once to keep it down because of company. They're not really paying attention, because she's fairly sure if they knew the company she was talking about is a looker like M'gann, they'd probably sit up and take better notice. But Artemis just keeps walking, flipping on the light to the small office space she shares with Wally, and their dog Nelson pads over to her in excitement. She bends, ruffling his ears.   
  
Then she overhears M’gann shout, bright and gleeful, “Oh my god, Dick!”  
  
Artemis comes back out into the main room to see M’gann and Dick Grayson hugging out their reunion, and a curious Bart and Jaime rising up from the lime-green sofa, game controls forgotten in their hands as their avatars get creamed onscreen. The boys are too young to know either M’gann or Dick personally, but they’ve all heard the stories. Artemis watches from across the room, waiting her turn, grinning as M’gann blathers a mile a minute at Dick in excitement. Dick catches Artemis’ gaze over M’gann’s shoulder, amused and conspiratorial, and Artemis just shakes her head and suppresses a laugh as M’gann’s running commentary lands on his hair.  
  
“It’s too long,” M’gann is saying, looking like she wants to grab a pair of scissors. “You need a haircut.”  
  
Dick rolls his eyes. “Thanks, mom, but the prison didn’t exactly have a barbershop.”  
  
He sets down a bag near his feet and strides across the room towards Artemis. She throws her hands around him, grinning as they hug. “I don’t know,” Artemis remarks, pulling back. “I think the hair works.”  
  
Dick beams, teasingly. “Not even two seconds in, and you’re already hitting on me. I’m gonna tell Wally.”  
  
The next few hours pass by in a blur, making introductions to all the boys, talking, laughing, and Artemis texts Wally to book it back home because he and Conner should be here for this. They order from the all-night pizzeria down the road, and somehow Bart and Jaime get M’gann and Dick to share some of the embarrassing stories of when Wally and Artemis first met. At which point, Artemis musters the energy to chase them away, insisting it’s too late for them to be out on a school night. Like that’s ever stopped them before.   
  
At four in the morning, she sees Jaime and Bart off, and returns to find M’gann drifted off to sleep on the lime-green sofa. Dick tucks a blanket around her, then crashes on the corner chair with a heavy exhale.  
  
“Long day,” he remarks.  
  
She raises an eyebrow in acknowledgment, because she can imagine. “Wally and Conner should be here any second.”  
  
Dick glances over at M’gann’s sleeping form. “Does she know about Conner coming?”  
  
“No. That's something she can figure out when they’re staring at each other.”  
  
“Ha," Dick says, amused; he's never been above trolling his friends. "Well, she _is_ observant like that.”  
  
Artemis shakes her head, settling into the spot next to M’gann. “I try not to stick my nose in between exes, but sometimes I make exceptions. Speaking of, how’d your meeting go with Barbara?”  
  
Dick grimaces, looking away. “How’d you know about that?”  
  
Artemis rolls her eyes. “Please, who do you think you’re dealing with? I’ve known you almost as long as Wally. Like the first thing you _wouldn’t_ do is go running headlong in to a brick wall. I swear, you've got a thicker head than Wally sometimes. How bad did it go with Barbara?”  
  
The look on his face confirms her suspicions. “She’ll come around,” he insists. “Barbara’s angry, and she’s got every right to be. But she’ll come around. I know her better than anyone, and she always does the right thing in the end.”  
  
Artemis sighs. “Dick, this isn’t about the right thing. She’s moved on. You should respect that.”  
  
“We need her help. She’s the best hacker out there.”  
  
“Yeah? Well, if we don’t get her services, I recall you being pretty handy with a computer.”  
  
“That was four years ago, and even then, I wasn’t at her level.”  
  
“And that’s, of course, the only reason you went to see her today? To ask for her professional services.”  
  
Dick doesn’t bother with a denial; he just repeats, “She’ll come around.”  
  
Artemis doesn’t comment, but mostly because she doesn’t know what to say about it that would penetrate through Dick’s thick skull. The relationship between Barbara and Dick has always been one of those things she could never put her finger on, but it’s been a rollercoaster full of ups and downs. Lately, it bears more of a resemblance to a train wreck than anything else, and she just hates that either of them has had to go through so much pain. They both deserve happiness. Artemis just isn’t sure it’s in the books for them _together._  
  
She’s watched the pair evolve for over a decade and a half; Dick and Barbara spent their formative years as best friends, a strange duo full of bickering banter, but they’d always claimed to be nothing more than that. Rumors and speculations had been unfounded, even Artemis’ own instincts on the matter had been squashed early on. After all, they’d spent years dating other people. Dick, in particular, went through a slew of girls in a handful of years. Zatanna, then Raquel, then even one of Artemis’ high school friends Bette. By the time Barbara and Dick started dating, they’d kept it so low profile and such a secret that even Wally hadn’t known until months had passed. By then, Artemis had thrown up her hands in frustration because she’d been harboring her suspicions for years and hadn’t even been able to properly partake in the happy dance of _I-told-you-so_ when the time came.   
  
Then, for all too brief a period, things had been good. Artemis had even suspected that Dick and Barbara might beat her and Wally down the aisle, given enough time.  
  
Of course, fate had other plans.  
  
“Dick, this may shock you, but I’m a romantic as much as anybody else—”  
  
Dick chuckles, interrupting, “You’ve been dating Wally for almost as long as I’ve known you. Act the tough girl all you want, but that doesn’t shock me in the slightest.”  
  
She continues, unabated by his teasing, “But you might need to accept the possibility that when Barbara says she’s moved on, she _means_ it.”  
  
Dick doesn’t say anything to that, but his eyes shadow. He’s never had the look of a desperate man, not even when he’d been standing trial with a potential sentence for twenty-five to life. The way he looks now, though – it looks akin to someone barely holding onto the last shred of hope, a thin tinsel thread. Artemis derails the rest of her talk because of that. She hates seeing Dick so dejected.   
  
She changes the subject, instead. “What about Kaldur?”  
  
“What about him?”  
  
“You can’t seriously ask him to help with this. Dick, Blank Manta is his father.”  
  
“I’m not asking him,” Dick replies, defensively.  
  
Artemis stares, confused. “What do you mean by that? He’s on the list. You told Wally you wanted him on the team.”  
  
Dick shakes his head, rising from the seat to dismiss the topic. “Look, I’m tired. Tell Wally and Conner I’ll meet up with them and everyone else, as planned, two days from now in Metropolis. I’m headed out tomorrow to Las Vegas.”  
  
“Vegas?” she questions, then realization dawns on her. “Zatanna and Raquel.”  
  
“Among others, yeah,” Dick nods. “I’ll see you on Friday.”  
  
“You need a place to crash?”  
  
Dick grins. “You forget who you’re talking to? I might not have access to my Wayne Trust Fund anymore, but I still planned well for rainy days. I’ve booked at a hotel already.”  
  
“All right. Have a good night. And Dick?”  
  
He turns toward her. “Yeah?”  
  
She smiles. “I’m glad you’re finally out. I missed you. We all did.”  
  
Dick flashes her a wide grin, half self-deprecating. “I’m not sure if _everyone_ missed me, but yeah. I missed you guys, too.”


	5. Chapter 5

Dick likes to people-watch.

When he first started doing it, it’d been in prison and he knew he was just torturing himself with the mundane task because it wasn’t as if life in the jailhouse was an unpredictable endeavor; a change in the daily routine usually meant violence of some sort had broken out, and even that was predictable to a certain extent. But Dick would spend hours out in the courtyard, lifting weights, and he’d pick up on everything around him like a sponge because Bruce’s lessons of  _always be observant_  had run bone-deep. The information he gathered was largely useless. It just gave him something to do, a skill to hone. He isn’t a natural like M’gann, who can pick up a tell and spot a lie from ten paces away; he is pretty good, though.

Still, there’s nothing like people-watching in the airport. Dick sips quietly from his cup of coffee, eyeing the rushing traffic of people running to and fro from gates, some with frenzied haste, others with weariness. He can spot the frequent travelers from the sporadic ones just by the shoes, the pace, or the agitation they display when they stare up at a pricelist marked up at least 50% in airport stores. He knows the guy sitting at the table to the right of him is having an affair, and that he’s meeting his mistress after the next flight. He can tell by the withered book in the hands of the woman sitting two seats behind him that she’s a recent graduate of law school and is currently studying for the New York Bar. He can spy the weariness and sickly pale skin of the flight attendant standing in line for Starbucks, and suspects something more severe than mere jetlag; an illness of some kind, covered up with too light make-up and the wrong shade of red lipstick.

He’s content enough to sit quietly for a long time, just watching them. Before his imprisonment, when patience became more of a necessity than a virtue, he used to never be able to sit still for long. ADD, some doctors had diagnosed during childhood, but Bruce knew the truth of it and recognized the listless energy as something that just needed to be funneled. Dick was a whiz at school, and he ran cross-country and did acrobatics too, another family discipline (this time, his biological). He even qualified for states his junior year. But in addition to honor roll and all his extra-curricular activities, his childhood had mostly been spent learning the secret Wayne family business. Con after con, a sorta  _extra_  extra-curricular activity that fashioned him into the perfect pupil for Bruce.

For the first few months after imprisonment, his dreams were full of nothing but running, flying around the rooftops like some bird, outpacing everyone around him as he soared in freedom. It took a bitter amount of depression for Dick to realize that he had better use of the downtime than just daydreaming. He hit the books, investigated Luthor, Black Manta and Vandal Savage within the confines and restrictions of the penitentiary, and bid his time with meaningful pursuits like an online Masters Degree in Business and Law from Harvard University. Alfred had arranged for the payments in tuition, drawn from Dick’s own funds that had nothing to do with Bruce’s accounts, but he knew the Wayne name had carried favor anyway, especially in getting admissions despite the stain of imprisonment. Dick hated that, that no matter how independently wealthy he got, no matter how he stood on his own feet and remained a self-governing entity, he would always be seen as Bruce Wayne’s ward and charity case.

In any case, it took less time than he imagined in completing all his self-appointed tasks, which just meant he had more time to people-watch in prison. Bruce would have called it an idle waste of time, but Dick knew the intrinsic value of the task was something that would payoff in subtle ways. In some unquantifiable aspect. Besides, it gave him something to do, and boredom in prison was nearly as dangerous to him as some of the skinheads that had an itch for him.

The PSA tugs Dick out of his thoughts as it calls for his flight. He lifts to his feet and folds his newspaper in thirds, tucking it under his arm. He boards through the First Class boarding line, for once deciding to splurge a little in luxury; after prison, he deserves it. The flight attendant offers him a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice before takeoff, and he sets his bag in the overhead compartment and slides into the seat near the window. He stretches out his legs. The minutes pass by, and then, finally, a bag is set on the seat next to him, but Dick doesn’t look over immediately to acknowledge the presence. He doesn’t need to. The flight attendant calls for everyone to settle in and put their tray tables in an upright and locked position, and provides the pre-flight safety demonstration that any frequent-flyer can mime with their eyes closed. Dick just stares out at the empty runway as another plane taxis across from them. His neighbor is quiet, unobtrusive as he moves about; it isn’t until after takeoff and the plane is soaring around 30,000 feet in the air that a look is even exchanged between the two.

Sitting beside Dick is a tall, dark-skinned man with light blond hair cut short and neatly trimmed. There are distinctive features that set him apart from the other first class passengers: despite his pale green eyes and high cheek bones, or the lean and muscular build, it’s his black, eel-like tattoos that run across his back and along his arms that attract the most attention. His blue and black jacket is folded in half over his lap, and when Dick spies a familiar pair of black sandals, he can’t help but smile.

“So,” Dick says, craning his neck to the side. “You look comfortable.”

“You too, my friend,” Kaldur returns, a subtle smile on his lips. “It seems freedom suits you.”

* * *

Kaldur’s story is an interesting one, and Dick isn’t even sure if he knows half of it.

He knows that Kaldur was raised by his mother in Atlanta, where he attended one of the crummiest public schools in the area; he managed to stand out academically, but it was the fate and folly of the educational system that only recognized his athletic talents. His acceptance letter to Penn State was largely based on his prowess in swimming. His agility and speed assured him an athletic scholarship ride for all full four years, and he could have been an easy win in state and national competition. He tossed all that away the same day his high school sweetheart was killed, and Kaldur found out his father had been responsible.

Black Manta had been a native of Atlanta Georgia too, but his story was different. He’d grown up as part of the criminal underground, and became well-known sometime around the early seventies. He started in the numbers game with a small time east-coast gang, then moved on to establish his own mob family that ran from the riverfront. His headquarters was some family-run restaurant on the harbor, but Kaldur had never been part of that world; his mother had been adamant about keeping him out of the life. But when Black Manta eventually went from major loan shark and local mob boss to the self-proclaimed King of Georgia, uprooting two or three crime families in the way, he gained a lot of enemies. Some turned states evidence, but it was a hit set out from competing families that made a true mess of things.

They targeted Black Manta’s kin, legitimate or otherwise, and that put Kaldur on the radar in a bad way. His girlfriend, Tula, was killed in a car accident that had been meant to claim Kaldur’s life.

Dick doesn’t know a lot of the story immediately after that. He just knows that Kaldur emerged years later as one of the most formidable con artists on the streets. For one that rose in status and gained such recognition so swiftly, Kaldur is a calm and civil man. Both inside and out of the game. It’s a trait unshared by almost everyone else Dick has ever known. Soft-spoken and clear headed, Kaldur has a talent for thinking things through and formulating plans before taking any sort of action.

It was this foresight and level-headedness that saved Dick from himself years back, when he’d been spiraling out of control and had nearly come to homicidal lengths in his quest for vengeance against Luthor, Black Manta and Vandal Savage. It was Kaldur that had pulled Dick back from the brink of pulling the trigger on some idiot lowlife that had only been tangentially involved in Jason and Barbara’s accident. It was Kaldur that had tracked Dick through his rampage along the east coast, and it was Kaldur that reminded him that meticulous and long term planning would serve both revenge  _and_  justice.

Kaldur knew what it was like to lose loved ones. Jason’s death and Barbara’s paralysis had sent Dick into a downward spiral, but Kaldur had talked him off the proverbial ledge. Dick just had to be  _patient._

He’d gone to prison, but if it hadn’t been for Kaldur, Dick is positive he wouldn’t even be alive today.

Over the years, Kaldur kept in contact with him while Dick served out his time. Together, they planned the takedown of all three big names as a meticulous two-man job. Dick had shared ideas with Kaldur that he’d told no other man, not even Wally. The idea of drawing in a group of con artists and criminals in helping to take down the Big Three had been mapped out, but Dick had been hesitant about asking anyone for help. It was always Kaldur that had pressed upon the advantages and wisdom in a united number.

Now, though things have dramatically shifted from their original plan and the evolving nature of their team is being lined up like a fresh game of chess, Dick is simultaneously eager to catch Kaldur up on everything and a little wary. The time has come for action, rather than just planning.

During the five-hour flight, they spend it exchanging hand-written notes and scrawling out new ideas. They can’t talk. Someone might overhear. But the exchange still flows freely. With Kaldur, Dick feels a kindred spirit in the methodical and calculating nature of planning a heist or a long-con. Most think that Kaldur is out of the game. Most are under the impression that he retired after a big score a few years back. None are wiser to the truth: Kaldur has been planning his father’s takedown since he was eighteen years old. They always say,  _vengeance is a dish best served cold_. Kaldur took that lesson to heart.

By the time the flight lands in Vegas at four in the afternoon, Dick and Kaldur gather their things and move across the aisle as a team.

“Everything is different this time,” Kaldur says, greeted by the sunlight outside. “We only had one bargaining chip before. This time, we have more players, better rules – the element of surprise. This time, we cannot lose.”

“We won’t,” Dick says, with a little more confidence than he may feel. “We’ll do this the right way, Kaldur. I promise.”

* * *

Zatanna’s name is up in big glistening lights on the Vegas strip. Dick and Kaldur purchase two front row sets from scalpers to the evening show at MGM Grand, dressing smartly in well-fitted suits that set them apart from the gathering crowd. The auditorium is sold out, because the buzz around Zatanna has been growing since her first major show a few years back. Her high-caliber magic show is full of the glittering showmanship and a mix of illusions expected of any magician, but there’s also the addition of a few fireworks and explosions that are particularly owed to another one of Dick’s ex-girlfriends. Raquel has been working on Zatanna’s show since the inception, and the two together have crafted a show that critics hail as one of the most visually stunning, show-stopping performances to grace the Sin City.

Dick checks his watch. “It should be starting any second now. You think Zatanna will notice us in the crowd?”

“Hopefully it will be a nice surprise,” Kaldur acknowledges, “but let us not hold our breath on it. The audience tonight is quite…” he looks around the large auditorium, “massive.”

Dick keeps silent, glancing around the place. He quickly scans the ceilings and side parts of the stage, searching for clues on how later performances and tricks might be done – equipment or visual projectors that could help with illusions – but he can’t seem to spot any of them. He doesn’t mean to make his scrutiny obvious, but Kaldur looks down at his program and smothers a smile.

“Still have yet to figure out even one of Zatanna’s tricks, have you?”

Dick tries not to scowl. It was a running joke among friends when Dick had been dating Zatanna. He never found it as amusing as others. “I’ll figure some stuff out tonight.”

“Of course,” Kaldur says, serenely, but somehow it sounds suspiciously like sarcasm anyway.

Dick pointedly ignores the comment. It’s a source of frustration that he’s never been able to figure out how Zatanna manages any of her tricks – not even _one._  He grew up in the circus until the age of nine. He easily learned the tells and distractions that most magicians utilized to fool an audience, and had long since been bored with the normal flare of magician shows. But Zatanna is different. She refuses to divulge her secrets and despite his best efforts, Dick has never been able to deconstruct any of her tricks. Even now, if Dick didn’t know any better, he would almost believe she knows real magic and not just the illusion of it.

When the show begins, it’s to a rambunctious audience. Zatanna appears on stage in a puff of smoke, and there’s a rousing few tricks immediately within the first few minutes. She’s charismatic and energetic, mesmerizing the audience easily. To Zatanna, though, it’s more than just a show. Her father had been one of the greatest magicians known in the industry, but there are only a few that know that his death a few years back occurred while practicing a trick that involved complete submergence into water for seven full minutes. It’s a trick that no other magician has ever dared since.

“And for my next performance—” Zatanna stops short, a quick pause as her eyes catch sight of Dick and Kaldur in the audience. Her lips curl upwards, just slightly, and she coarse corrects without missing another beat, “I’m going to need a volunteer.”

Hands are raised all across the audience, some even shouting eagerly, but Dick merely gestures with his hand, raising it only a few inches in a half-hearted wave. But he does it with a self-assured grin tugging at his lips because he knows Zatanna is looking right at him.

“Oh, I see one in the front row. The one in the nice suit. Blue eyes.”

Dick smiles. The climb onto stage is short, and Zatanna makes some crack to the ladies about him being a looker, which gets a few catcalls from the audience. He feels a blush work across his cheeks but remains aloof until he’s suddenly standing before Zatanna. She presses closer than necessary, a grin to her lips, and this up close she looks like a vision of exotic beauty because she’s got a thick smear of eyeliner and flawless makeup, and her magicians outfit is still one of the sexiest things he’s ever seen.

“And what’s your name?” Zatanna asks.

“Brian,” Dick answers, smiling.

“Well,  _Brian_ , lets see if we can work some magic on you.”

It’s an act when she shows him around the stage. An act for the benefit of the audience, and one that’s supposed to assure them that there isn’t any hinky business going on. Dick should be paying attention to the technical details, but it’s entertaining to watch Zatanna from this up close. She finally asks him to step into a steel box that’s seven feet high, and he makes a show of going around the box for a quick inspection before she shoves him in with a bit more force than necessary. She closes the lid in his face as he starts to say some wiseass remark about having claustrophobia.

Inside the box, Zatanna’s voice seems dulled even on the house speakers. _“Egatskcab eth ot xe ym evom, kram ym no.”_

He hears disconcerting sounds of something suspiciously like a chainsaw start up, and if he were another man, a smarter man, perhaps – certainly more cautious, at least – he’d probably be rethinking the wisdom of allowing himself to be trapped in a steel box by an ex-girlfriend while she operates a chainsaw. There’s laughter from the crowd, and then gasps, and the entire time he’s wondering what’s going on.

Then there’s a loud bang that threatens to deafen him. Dick cringes on instinct, the earsplitting boom rocking his box until it feels like it’s going to tip over. A series of other explosions follow, each progressively louder than the last. Dick  _really_  has no idea what’s going on, but this many explosions and fireworks means only one thing. Or, rather, one person.

When the door to his box finally opens, he finds himself somehow backstage. Zatanna and the audience are still winding down the trick, and he can hear a few more dramatic gasps and loud bangs. One of the backstage helpers pulls him out of the box, congratulating and thanking him on helping with the execution of one of Zatanna’s tricks. “You’ll need to stand by for about fifteen minutes or so,” a stagehand says, “so that your reappearance can be worked into the final act.”

The backstage is full of technical support staff that quickly usher him towards the side. When Dick peeks from behind the stage curtain, he sees an exact replica of his steel box on stage, but when Zatanna opens it, a flock of doves fly out. The audience cheers.

“Unbelievable,” he mutters under his breath.

Once again, he honestly has no clue how he was transported from the stage to the back.

“That’s what Zatanna is there for,” an amused voice remarks, wryly. “To make things unbelievable.” 

He turns around to find Raquel Erwin standing behind him, hand on her hip, and a protruding belly of a woman at least seven months pregnant.

“Um,” Dick begins, eloquently, thrown by the sight. "... hi."

Raquel rolls her eyes, hand moving to rest against her belly. “C’mon, Boy Genius. Let’s catch up.”

* * *

He stays backstage during the rest of the show with Raquel, and he spends the first few minutes getting readjusted to the idea of her being _pregnant_. His intel had fallen short in that regard. He didn’t even know she was dating anyone, not that prison was a place where he’d be privy to such gossip. Maybe a bit of it has to do with the fact that he’s an ex-boyfriend, but mostly he just feels like he’s screwed up as a friend somehow by not being aware of such a monumental change in her life.

For a brief second, he finds himself debating about inviting her into their plans because of the pregnancy, but then his mind stalls when follows her into a room with stacks of explosives. And he thinks,  _this woman will blow me to smithereens if I question her ability._  And he’s not talking hyperbole. 

She chats amiably with him the entire time, barely batting an eye as she takes a small glob of explosives that’s been pre-formed and calls out to one of her helpers. She rattles off some instructions about placing the explosives in the “prime position,” and it looks like the stagehand wants to protests, and even begins to say something about how the manager has been objecting recently to some of the detonations, when Raquel throws a pointed glare. The staffer shuts up, and scrams.

“They’re worried I’m gonna blow up the place,” Raquel remarks offhandedly, with a roll of her eyes. “Like I couldn’t do this stuff in my sleep.”

“Is C4 really necessary in a magician’s performance?”

“When is C4  _not_  necessary?” Raquel simply tosses back, grinning.

Dick smirks, shaking his head ruefully. She’s always been an avant-garde explosive expert, a resource for people like Dick who want to do their work unsupervised, unregistered and unapproved of by anyone. Mostly, he figures, outside of the military and construction jobs, he can’t imagine there are many legitimate uses for her area of expertise. Hollywood and Vegas frequently use her for stunts and theatrics, but even Zatanna’s show is a waste of Raquel’s skills. She helps because Zatanna is her friend, and it pays well enough. But Raquel is the type of woman that can study the blueprints for a complex substructure for all of thirty seconds, then place a single charge in an isolated position and control the explosion with pinpoint accuracy. It’s a little scary, in fact, how good she is. Wally always used to joke about her being the resident pyromaniac, and it’s not altogether a joke. She has a burning curiosity with explosives. Her nickname in high school used to be Rocket for a reason.

As he watches her work backstage, he can’t help but smile in appreciation. It’s frequently been mentioned to Dick, mostly in jest, that the majority of his ex-girlfriends, from Barbara to Zatanna to Raquel, are skilled enough to murder in some inventive ways and smart enough to get away with it clean with no trace evidence. It’s a thought that would keep a lesser man up at night. Thankfully, he’s always managed to remain friends with most of his exes. All flirting aside, he easily transitioned back to being friends with both Zatanna and Raquel like they’d never been any hiccups in their friendships. Zatanna had been his first girlfriend when he’d been too young to get serious, and Raquel had never been anything serious in the first place. Maybe it was so easy to move on and reestablish their friendships because both women held a better cornerstone in his life as friends rather than lovers? In any case, he’s thankful that it isn’t awkward or painful. 

Barbara, of course, is the one exception to that trend. 

“So,” Raquel says, looking him over once, up and down, grinning wolfishly. “Prison has been kind to you.”

He smirks, ‘cause she was always a shameless flirt, and that just made two of them. “You look good, too.”

“I look like a whale,” she protests, glaring. “I hate not being in shape.”

“Round is a shape?” Dick offers. 

He ducks a flying plushie doll. “Don’t make a pregnant woman kick your ass, Richard Grayson! It would be embarrassing.”

His smile grows a little, but then turns a little serious too. “The father anyone I know?”

Raquel shakes her head, a pinch of annoyance on her face. “Nope. And he’s not in the picture anymore, anyway.” She places her hands over her stomach, protectively, and maybe with a little bit of anger too. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got this. And Zatanna has been helping, too. She’s my Lamaze coach, y’know?”

Raquel and Zatanna have always been as thick as thieves.

Her eyes darken, calculating. “So, you and Kaldur in the audience? I can only guess at what you guys are doing here, and it ain’t to play a game of Blackjack.”

“You’d be right.”

“Who’re you trying to proposition this time? Me or Zatanna?”

“Why pick? I need both of you.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You’re planning something that big?”

“I’m looking to gather around a dozen people or so.”

Raquel pauses, disquieted. “Careful, sunshine. Take it from an explosives expert. If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, you better know you’re gonna get burned. It’s not a matter of  _if._  It’s a matter of  _when._ ”

“I’ve already gotten burned,” Dick answers. “Now I’m looking for payback.”

An explosion goes off nearby, on stage. It sounds comically –  _disconcertingly_ – loud, but Raquel doesn’t even blink at the disruption. Instead, she’s staring at Dick with something akin to pity in her eyes. She shakes her head, then looks to the corner where a TV screen is affixed to the wall. Zatanna’s show is wrapping up, and one of the earlier stagehands bursts into the room, “Oh there you are, Mister! We’ve been looking everywhere for you! You’re needed for the big finale! Did you sign the waiver?”

“What waiver?”

He’s dragged back towards the box before he can say another word, and suspects he’s going to reappear onstage in some fantastical way because the stagehand starts asking whether Dick has any particular aversions to heights, and would he be so kind as to sign a waiver of liability. No one really explains any specifics to him, and when he asks, Raquel just smirks a bit evilly and tells the stagehand to shove off. 

Dick is forced to sign the waiver without really reading it, and Raquel takes a gleeful amount of amusement in his confusion. Then she starts strapping a harness onto him, one that’s affixed to the familiar steel box. 

“I’m not going to be hung upside down, am I?”

“What?” she asks, sarcastically. “Like you’re scared of heights?”

_Touché._

“Just promise me one thing,” she says, suddenly serious.

“If it’s a promise not to throw up,” Dick jokes, double-checking the harness, “I can’t do that. I had a big lunch.”

“Don’t kill anyone,” she says, voice so small and worried that Dick snaps his eyes up in surprise. She holds his gaze, solemnly. “I don’t care if vengeance is deserved in what you’re doing or not. I’m not going to be a party to murder. And you’re better than that, Dick.”

Dick grabs hold of her hand, squeezing. “No ones is going to die,” he says. “I promise you that.”

She shakes her head, and sighs. “Never promise that to a girl who makes a living handling C4. We always prepare for the worst.”

She closes the door in his face before he can think of a response.

* * *

The show’s final act is an unparalleled success, partially because Dick can’t help but showoff a little by doing an acrobatic somersault out of the box that’s entirely unscripted. The audience eats it up because they presume it’s part of the act, and Zatanna just laughs and tugs him up with her onstage to take the final bows. 

Afterwards, they all have dinner at a four star restaurant where Raquel spends the majority of the time flirting with Kaldur rather than Dick, except Kaldur seems to be oblivious to this little detail. Zatanna casts an amused smile, and ribs Dick in the stomach a little as the two watch the spectacle unfold with Kaldur none the wise.

The majority of the dinner is spent in good humor and company, but business is still business. 

“I can’t, Dick,” Zatanna starts off. “I’ve got a contract, and I’m booked solid for the next two weeks.”

“That’s fine,” Dick says, inwardly cringing. “We can still use you for the later stage of our plan.”

Zatanna’s eyes are dark. “I want to help. I really do. But—”

Kaldur cuts in, “We wouldn’t be asking if we didn’t think you were each perfectly capable of handling your parts. I promise you, Dick and I have planned this carefully.”

After a beat, Zatanna nods. “Let me ask my boss. I can maybe swing some things around with my schedule.”

Dick releases a breath, and turns to look at Raquel. 

She still looks ambiguous about the entire notion, but she glances once to Kaldur, then to Zatanna, then finally settles on Dick. “All right,” she says, heavily. “I’m in.”

“Thank you,” Kaldur says. “That gives us eight team members, and each one is vital to our plans.”

Dick, Kaldur, Wally, Artemis, M’gann, Conner, Zatanna and Rocket. The original team back together again. Dick almost feels warmed by the notion that all these friends have come together in his time of need, many of them without even needing to be asked. In the world they live in, as harsh and unforgiving as it can be, Dick almost doesn’t know how he’s gotten so lucky. But it weighs just as heavily on him, too. These people are risking their lives for him. He can’t let them down.

“Eight should be enough,” Kaldur determines.

But Dick suspects he knows better. Eight might sound like a lot, but it’s not enough.

Not nearly.

* * *

Logging onto her computer, Barbara sees she has an alert waiting. She set up her computer to flag anything Grayson-related, and today brings a handful of alerts. She parks her wheelchair in front of her hub of computer screens, mug in hand and a frown-line between eyebrows. 

“Just what exactly are you planning, Richard Grayson?”

* * *

 


	6. Chapter 6

Her alarm starts shrieking at five o’clock as it has every morning for the past four years. Barbara reaches over to the nightstand without even cracking open an eye, silencing the noise and rising up by her elbows. There are bars suspended from her ceiling that help her pull herself out of bed. By the time the sun rises, Barbara has managed to shower and get breakfast started, while her computers run algorithms and diagnostic checks for the day regarding security; she’s always been a paranoid person, but ever since she started operating as a consultant for the government and some of the richest fortune five hundred companies in the world, she’s tripled her security measures and been on the rabid edge of paranoia when it comes electronic espionage. Rarely any one of her employers has met Barbara in person because she’s made a point to be a ghost with them. Only two or three government employees can match a picture to her, and she knows enough material on them to bury them three times over if they ever threatened to expose her. It’s just prudent business in her line of work to be prepared like that.  
  
After breakfast, she parks her wheelchair in front of her hub of computer screens, mug in hand and glasses perched low on her nose. She’s been following Dick’s progress the last few days, from Gotham City to Las Vegas to, as of this morning, Metropolis. By her count, he’s broken parole at least four different ways since being released from prison less than seventy-two hours ago. There’s a frown-line forming above the bridge of her nose because she can also track the migration patterns of seven of his closest friends and associates, and they’re all headed to the same destination. Metropolis. She knows exactly what Dick is up to and who he’s after.  
  
What she can’t figure out is how all the players fit in.  
  
She’s got a window open for seven different profiles on three separate computer screens. They’re all familiar, because it includes some of her closest friends. Each of them has a dossier full of interesting biographies and extended rap sheets: Artemis, with her sealed juvie records; she was boosting cars and breaking into personal safes at the age of nine, and had gotten into extra trouble for “armed robbery” when she started carrying around a modified bow-and-arrow. Wally, with his mug shot from that one time he’d gotten arrested making a getaway outside Kentucky; he had on ridiculous goggles and a yellow spandex outfit that Barbara never did find out the story behind. Raquel, with her expulsion record from three different high schools; she was particularly famous for blowing up the gymnasium bathroom during Senior Prom. Conner, with his string of assault charges; the worst was last year in a bar fight outside North Dakota where he’d been defending some seventeen-year-old girl from her abusive date. And finally, M’gann, with her numerous and colorful spread of fraud and theft charges; the stories ranged from the Star City Museum heist in ’06 where a Rembrandt went missing, to allegations of impersonating Queen Perdita of the Vlatavan throne.  
  
Zatanna is the only one with a clean sheet, and Kaldur’s file is also surprisingly light. Barbara selects the last one out of curiosity, enhancing the screen window. She rereads the latest salient details regarding Kaldur’s activities since retiring from the business, but she’s already memorized it thanks to her photographic memory. It’s like a compulsion or something, in case she’s missed an obvious detail. Because gut instincts tell her something doesn’t make sense with the picture before her. It’s one thing for Dick to recruit a few friends, but he seems to be amassing a small army to fix past wrongs. What the hell is he planning?  
  
Barbara doesn’t try to dwell much on the past. Her motto in life has always been to keep moving forward. When she was ten, her parents enrolled her in advanced classes and she found an aptitude for computers and an IQ that was off the charts; for the next eight years, it was education and private tutoring and advanced placement. She met Dick along the way, and found a best friend and a kindred spirit. He’d introduced her to his other buddies, and she found her way into a secret life where her mettle was put to the test against corrupt corporations and immoral marks that made her skin crawl. She started hacking and running corporate espionage, and the rest, as they say, was history.  
  
It was a ragtag team that Dick assembled. They rarely worked all together. Barbara could recall a few times where he masterminded some plan that required four – maybe, five guys – tops. But eight? Barbara couldn’t recall a plan ever generating such scope, and they’d gone after some absurdly rich and crooked individuals in their time. They had always likened themselves to Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. Truthfully, they’d kept more than a little for themselves. Barbara thinks back to those days, and she remembers the rush so clearly. Young and brash and filled with the feeling of invincibility.  
  
They were such  _idiots._  
  
God, they’d been so  _stupid._  
  
It was an epiphany that arrived smoothly alongside a wheelchair, and a graveyard plot, and seven different rap sheets a mile long. They all have checkered pasts. They’re all damaged goods, in their own way. They thought they’d been living the perfect life, but the truth is they’d been naïve in their youth and unbelievably reckless.  
  
It took her four months to be released from the hospital after she broke her back. Surgeons, physical therapists, rehabilitation nurses, psychologists – an endless stream of specialists and experts. Bruce had splurged on the best in the world, but none of them could make her walk again. Meanwhile, it was a full three weeks before the medical examiner was able to release Jason’s body from the investigation. By then, the FBI was involved. By then, Dick had already landed himself in police custody after making a rampage up and down the east coast. Alfred had to fly up to Metropolis to retrieve the body himself, and Barbara was barely able to get temporary release from the hospital to sit in the front row of the cathedral. The tightening of her throat at the sight of Bruce standing before the closed casket is still one of those feelings that will forever remain burned into her memory. She’d been so  _angry_  at Dick for not being there. For picking vengeance when their shattered little family needed emotional support or, hell, even just his physical presence to help them through a rough time.  _She’d_  been angry, too. She’d been packing enough rage to level a mountain, but somehow she’d gotten through it without becoming reckless.  
  
She might never forgive Dick for abandoning them like that. She thought her feelings for him had dissipated years ago, that she’d come to a place where she no longer felt anything for Dick – not love, not anger, not anything. It was a lie she told to comfort herself.  
  
She can’t lie to herself like that anymore.  
  
One visit from him, a brief five minute conversation by a candlelit dinner, and she feels all these old emotions churning up inside her like a volcano. She hasn’t even seen her boyfriend since the night Dick visited her because she locked herself away into her cove of computers. Jason Bard is a detective with the Gotham PD division of Homicide, the partner to another one of Barbara’s childhood friends by the name of Roy Harper. He works long days and often nightshifts, so he hasn’t had the chance to notice her unusual behavior yet. Barbara hopes he won’t. She doesn’t want to explain why.  
  
There’s a knock at the door that pulls her out of her thoughts. Before Barbara can wheel herself over, the door flies open and she finds herself briefly regretting ever giving Stephanie Brown a key to her loft.  
  
“What’s up, doc?” Steph greets, bounding into the room with bags of groceries.  
  
Barbara sometimes asks Steph to pick up a few things from the store if she's swinging by, but Steph generally takes that to mean she has a _carte blanche_ to stock up the place with ample amounts of junkfood – majority of which, Barbara will never touch. Already, Steph is popping open a _Pringles_ can, munching as she blathers on about the traffic she caught on the way here, and how she had to use her baby (a black Ducati motorcycle) to weave through congestion in a third of a time.  
  
“So,” Steph finally spirals down. “How're you doing?”  
  
“Fine,” is Barbara’s automatic response.  
  
Steph rolls her eyes. “Yeah. Sure. I buy that. You’ve been hauled up in here for two days with no human interaction whatsoever. Conveniently timed with the reappearance of a certain ex from your past. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Can't be any correlation _at all.”_  
  
“You realize you can die by overdosing on sarcasm, right?”  
  
“I’ve gained immunity,” Steph replies. “Seriously, Babs, talk to me. You can’t tell me Richard Grayson’s reappearance hasn’t thrown you. Tim practically wet himself when they met, but even he was light-footed about the subject when it came up with Alfred and Bruce.”  
  
Barbara frowns, wheeling over to put the groceries away. She still can’t believe Dick left town without seeing Alfred at least once. Bruce, she can understand. Bruce has isolated himself in China for the last three months for reasons beyond explanation. Not even Barbara knows. She suspects it has something to do with Cassie, whose adoption from overseas has been… complicated, to say the least, but Bruce has been frustratingly tightlipped about it all. In fact, he’s only appeared briefly via video-conference and even his phone calls have teetered off in recent weeks. Barbara shakes off her annoyance, redirecting it back to the original source. Dick can talk all he likes, but he’s picked up more than a few bad habits from Bruce. He should have gone to visit Alfred at least once before skipping town. The kindly butler deserved at least that consideration.  
  
“So,” Steph probes. “You’re not going to say anything?”  
  
“What’s there to say, Steph?”  
  
“I don’t know. Something. The dude was a pretty big part of your life—”  
  
“And now that part is over,” she cuts in, flushing with unease. “He was just… my first. That’s all.”  
  
Steph nods like she’s only humoring Barbara. “I’ve heard the stories. Also, gotta say, kudos on picking a looker. Did you see that guy’s ass? Could bounce a quarter off—”  
  
“Yes, thank you.” Barbara glares, pointedly. “I’ve seen.”  
  
Steph’s amused act drops, draining from her face. Suddenly, for a sixteen year old girl that makes a sport of acting immature just to rile up the adults around her, she looks remarkably serious. “Babs, I know you got hurt. I know that… look, I’m not the best at this sort of stuff, but you can talk to me, y’know? It’s the least I can do after you’ve taken me in.”  
  
“ _Bruce_  adopted you.”  
  
“And he gave me a place to stay, and some training. Lots of training. A _shitload_ of training, in fact. But  _you_ , you also took me in.”  
  
Barbara exchanges a brief look with Steph, and the words warm through the rough exterior she's been hiding behind lately. “I appreciate that,” she says, smiling softly. “It’s just… I’m not good company right now.”  
  
Stephanie frowns, but nods like that was the answer she’d been expecting. “The offer remains open.”  
  
It’s another few minutes before Steph is through the door again, hollering about plans to go drag Tim’s ass out of the library so that they can enjoy the good weather together. Barbara just shakes her head and smiles, pulling her chair back up to her hub of computers. Except, this time, her eyes fall towards the framed photograph on her desk. It shows Tim, Steph and Cass all roughhousing on a field of grass. They’re all smiling, so young and carefree – it’s largely a lie most of the time, because all three carry more dark secrets and haunted pasts than any teenager should have to hide.  
  
Tim Drake was the orphaned son of a CEO from one of Bruce’s rival companies. Jack Drake died at the age of thirty-seven when he’d tried to blow the whistle on some corrupt shareholders in his own company, and he’d paid for that integrity with a bullet to the back of his head. The four partners had almost gotten away with it. The detectives in charge of the investigation had been two of the worst; inept or dirty, either way, they didn’t care about the murder. Jake Drake was just another rich, fat CEO to them. But Bruce took note. He took down the men responsible in an elaborate scheme that caught the crooks red-handed. When the dust settled, all four were thrown in prison for murder, conspiracy to embezzle, and fraud; each were serving two life sentences, back to back. The company had gone bankrupt, but the swindled shareholders had found their investments mysteriously reimbursed the next day back into their accounts.  
  
Only Tim, fourteen at the time, was smart enough to figure out what had happened.  
  
Barbara sometimes finds herself surprised by the cleverness he displays, because he has a keen intellect and a knack for deducing that would put to shame most credible detectives. There is something undeniably sweet about him, so earnest and kind, but beneath the smiles and bright eyes, Barbara knows he’s pure steel. Unlike the others, who fell into this life through chance or circumstance, Tim pushed his way in. He’d been dogged after Bruce for months to let him become another apprentice, like Dick. The rest was a series of tumbling blocks that had led Bruce to officially adopt him, a move that could’ve ended up disastrous, but it’s been anything but.  
  
Steph had been a year and a half after that. Barbara never knew Stephanie’s father, a gunrunner dubbed “Cluemaster” by the newspapers she often read up about in the morning, but she knew he raised Steph as a pickpocket from a young age. A few years back, she tried to lift Bruce’s watch on the streets and she’d gotten away with it too; led him through a five-block chase and escaped up a fire-ladder while Bruce called after her. She’d already fenced the Rolex for twenty-five grand by the time Bruce had tracked her down, and he’d been impressed with her from the start, despite himself. Her potential had been obvious, but he’d held strong against the idea of accepting another wayward teen into his life.  
  
It was not until Stephanie’s mother died that the bubble burst. Though Bruce never claimed to be an upstanding parental figure, even he knew that if Cluemaster was left to his own devices, he would twist Stephanie to his own gains. When her father made it perfectly clear that her presence would only be tolerated if she brought in cash on a consistent basis, Bruce stepped in. But it was the moment Steph showed up with bruises – a biking accident, she claimed, to no one's belief – that Barbara knew it was only a matter of time before she was living in the Wayne Manor. Within two weeks of that, Cluemaster was behind bars with hard evidence placing him at the scene of a robbery gone bad.   
  
Bruce has a habit of picking up wayward strays. Barbara chides him on it, but the truth is she’s prone to the same weakness.  
  
Cassie’s story is the worst. As a child raised as an assassin within an elite Chinese Triad, she developed unparalleled hand-to-hand fighting skills before she was even given the opportunity to learn how to talk. She talks now, but only a little. But when Bruce first discovered her on a trip abroad, she’d been as mute as a monk. He managed to befriend her, and bring her back to the US where he immediately started the asylum process. The overhanging threat of the Triad’s retribution has been a thorny side in their lives ever since, but Bruce claims he’s been handling it. (Barbara isn’t as sure.) In any case, Cassie has found her place within the mismatched group as a sorta silent protector, a warrior turned retrieval specialist. When the others get in trouble, Barbara knows she can send Cassie into any dangerous territory to get them out. It’s come in handy more than a few times.   
  
She’d meant what she’d said to Dick earlier. Barbara is out of the game. She’s clean and legit. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t, on occasion, break her own rule to help the family business. She might not have been adopted by Bruce like the rest of them, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Bruce Wayne is her family, just like his kids are. She needs to protect them, and it burns, more than just a little, every time she thinks about the one kid she never managed to protect. Jason Todd.  
  
The cursor on her computer screen blinks at her, beckoning.

* * *

  
  
At three in the afternoon, the plane lands on the tarmac in Metropolis with a rough bounce, as though the pilot is as impatient to get off the plane as his passengers. Wally stretches his legs and grabs the luggage from his overhead compartment, while Artemis quietly slides out from the window seat. She looks across the First Class Cabin and waves to M’gann, who’s still half-waking up from a well-rested nap. There’s a beat where M’gann opens her mouth to say something, but it dies a quick death when Conner interrupts the moment by abruptly dropping his suitcase down with a heavy thud. M’gann clamps her mouth shut, glaring up at him, and then goes about retrieving her own luggage with stiff shoulders.  
  
Wally sighs. The two have barely spoken a word to each other since reuniting, and it’s left the foursome struggling through awkward silences all day long. Wally isn’t sure how much more of this he can stand.  
  
They file out one by one and the flight attendant wishes them a safe journey on the remainder of their trip. Wally bites back the comment,  _safe journey?_  Forget the convoluted plot to take down the Big Three. He’s more worried about the danger of sharing a taxi ride with both M’gann and Conner.  
  
When they reach the line of cabs outside the airport, M’gann insists on one of her favorite hotels in Metropolis, but Wally cuts in quickly. “Sorry, M’gann. Dick's already chosen where we’re staying. It’s a five star hotel, though. You should enjoy it.”  
  
By the time they hit downtown, traffic is particularly appalling, and the cabbie, some Middle Eastern dude, zones out in the drive with some Arabic music playing low in the front. Wally grips the armrest with annoyance, cursing under his breath at the needless delay. He’s been to Metropolis plenty before, and it’s a nice city for the most part – beautiful, clean, and friendly – but he hates the traffic. Despises it. If he can’t go anywhere fast, he might as well be in a torture chamber all day long. He already misses his Camero, but decides not to voice the thought because Artemis has finally gotten M’gann chatting animatedly again.  
  
“It’s so lovely, isn’t it?” M’gann beams. “I find it surprisingly charming for such a big city.”  
  
Conner snorts his disdain. “Don’t let the bright lights fool you. A few decades ago, this place was seedy. Go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters,” he sighs, disgusted. “It only got sanitized like this in the last fifty years or so.”  
  
M’gann glares at him. “Do you have to do that?”  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Be so…  _you_ ,” she responds, a bit hostile.  
  
“Uh,” Artemis cuts in, quickly, “I think that’s our Hotel right up there!”  
  
Wally and Artemis book it inside and the registration is a short wait, thankfully. The Belhop lugs up about a dozen bags, more than half of which are M’gann’s alone, and when they arrive at the top floor, a floor specifically reserved for their party, the elevator opens and they’re standing in front of a pair of double doors.   
  
“Thanks, my man,” Wally says, tipping the bellhop generously. “We’ll take it from here.”  
  
He relieves the guy of all the bags, and starts towards the door. The “Do Not Disturb” sign is placed on the doorknob with purpose, because they can’t have just anyone, even hotel staff, barging in on their suites. Artemis keys open the room, and pushes the doors in.  
  
Inside, he’s expecting luxury. He’s expecting a high-ceiling suite, and rooms that are elegant and scrupulously clean. Maybe a baby grand piano will be sitting unassumingly in the corner? But mostly, he thinks the place will be full of minimalist furniture and interesting art. The manager assured him the building’s east side has a spectacular view of the city skyline. He’s looking forward to maybe even seeing the iconic globe on top of the Daily Planet from his room. Deep-colored walls, hardwood floors, the custom-made wool carpeting – he’s expecting all of it, and for the most part, it delivers.  
  
What he isn't expecting is the  _chaos._  
  
As soon as the doors open, they wince to the sound of someone or something blaring a cacophonous static noise through the house speakers. Reams of paper are strewn everywhere. There are no less than six computer monitors and TV screens across the main room, hobbled and hotwired together, thick black cords running everywhere in a labyrinth of tangles on the floor. Raquel has a trunk full of detonators open in the corner, and Wally’s not even going to ask how she managed to get that through airport security. Zatanna and Kaldur are hunched over a table covered in blueprints, and they’re all wincing against the grating noise in the air.  
  
“What on Earth is going on?” M’gann manages, screaming above the noise.  
  
The sound cuts short, and Dick pops his head out from behind a corner. “Oh, hey, guys! Sorry, I was testing the sound proofing on the walls. Did you guys hear anything in the halls?”  
  
“Uh, no,” Wally says. “But in fairness, the hearing in my ears may now never be the same again.”  
  
Everyone comes into the center room for hugs and hellos. Wally tries not to stare at Raquel’s protruding stomach, because she quite frankly scares him even on a good day, but he must slip up anyway because she glares.  _“God, Wally, I’m pregnant, not an alien!”_  Artemis hugs Zatanna, and Kaldur claps a hand over Conner’s back, and M’gann is gushing over whether Raquel knows if she’s having a boy or a girl; all in all, it’s utter chaos in the room for several long minutes.  
  
Finally, Dick blows a whistle between his teeth to grab everyone’s attention. “Glad you guys could make it,” he manages in the brief calm. “Why doesn’t everyone get settled in and wash up? We’ll meet back here for dinner in two hours. We’re ordering in.”  
  
“Straight to business?” Wally asks.  
  
Dick nods. “Straight to business.”   
  
With a sigh, Wally nods because he pretty much expected that. He follows Artemis out the door, where they take a left and arrive at their own suite. M’gann has one across the hall, and he thinks Conner is somewhere on the other side of the elevator. Their room is comparable in size to the master suite, but without all the madness. Except Wally barely even notices any of that. As soon as the doors close, he tugs Artemis into his arms, saying, “thank god we don’t have to share a room.” She makes half a protest about unpacking, but he ends up silencing her with a kiss which is one of the few effective measures he’s discovered over the years that actually works on getting Artemis to stop protesting pretty much anything. His mind happily stalls on everything else, focus narrowing in on the feel of her slight frame against his.   
  
“What?” she manages, between kisses. “Wanna christen the room already?”  
  
“I would have been open to joining the mile high club,” he throws back, already working open the button on her jeans, “if only it hadn’t been for M’gann and Conner’s company.”  
  
She laughs, then moans when he sucks a wet bruise into her throat. She plants one hand against his chest, maybe intending to push away to catch her breath or something, but Wally decides to grab the back of her thighs instead, easily lifting her. In the next second, she’s pressed against the far wall. The angle between them should’ve been more awkward, but her fingers wrap around the front of his shirt like she’s trying to gain purchase to climb up his damn body.   
  
“We’ve got two hours,” she tells him, huskily. “Make ‘em count.”  
  
He grins. “Challenge accepted.”  


* * *

 


	7. Chapter 7

Dick has a few hours to kill, so in the meantime he takes a short walk down to the café across the street from their hotel, and grabs a copy of  _The Daily Planet_. He’s still getting used to the liberty of sunshine and freedom, and the little moments like sitting under a shaded veranda with a half-folded newspaper are still some of the simple joys in life. The newspaper’s front-page story has a sobering affect, however.  _Industrialist mogul and billionaire entrepreneur Lex Luthor hinted on Thursday that there may be a presidential run in his future. “I’m open to that possibility,” the known Fiscal Conservative said, when asked on GBS’s “G. Gordon Godfrey Tonight” about a future White House bid. “But we’re a long way away. I’m focused right now on trying to stay involved in the fray and make sure that Americans do the right thing on an international global market.”_

_Once thought to be entirely out of the running because of former Senate investigation hearings that held allegations against LexCorp for corruption and SEC violations, Luthor has rebounded in recent years by a heavy marketing campaign that’s sanitized his reputation. With aggressive charity and public relations work, Luthor has changed his public image. And according to a number of observers, he's believed to be banking on heavy support among influential government figures and multinational corporations to give him a breakthrough victory as the front-running GOP candidate in the primaries held next year…_

Dick finds himself staring fixatedly at the picture of Luthor, sharply dressed and smiling beneath the headline; the caption for the photo announces it as a picture taken in front of a hospital wing his donations had built. He knows Bruce has given twice as much as Luthor in any given charity, but Bruce doesn’t do publicity beyond what’s necessary because Dick knows, for all his duplicity, Bruce is honest in his intentions when it comes to charity. He wonders if the hospital knows the ward was built with Lex’s blood money, with money made by exploiting children in third world countries, by propelling war and entrenching poverty. It’s amazing how naïve the world is, and how short their memory falls when it was comes to men like Luthor. It was only this time a decade ago when Luthor’s known associates had been drug cartels and war profiteers. 

Those associations still stand, but they’re hidden now.

There was a time, he knew, when Dick would have reacted to this news with frustration, when he would have felt the lash of injustice turn him tense and angry. Now, he feels calmer because he has a purpose, a plan of action. He hardly tastes the coffee in his cup, even as he sips it. Instead, his mind is miles away and that’s significantly preferable to the anger that he used to know. He drops a heavy tip for his waiter and leaves. The walk back to his hotel suite is short, but the elevator ride isn’t wasted because he uses the time to contemplate the beginnings of another contingency plan. By the time the door pings open, Dick is so lost in thought that he doesn’t immediately notice the luggage waiting in the hallway. Then he stops short, staring. The floor is booked solid by him. Everyone he invited is here already, so whose bags are these? 

He keys open his suite, and finds several unexpected people inside.

In some ways, Dick isn’t surprised: Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake are crashed on his sofa, watching TV; Cassandra Cain is in the corner, standing tall like a guard behind a seated Barbara, who has  _his_  computer up and running and  _his_ encrypted files already open. He stops short at the doorway, just staring, but Stephanie merely waves at him and Tim offers a hearty hello. The other two women don’t even look up to acknowledge him, though he can see Barbara’s shoulders stiffen a bit.

“We got here twenty minutes ago,” Steph tells him, and raises a bag of  _M &Ms._ “And we’ve already raided the minibar.”

He doesn’t comment, at first. Flashing a puzzled look at them, he walks across the room towards Barbara. Cassie gives him a sharp look, half-assessing and half-threatening in a silent intimidating way that could give Bruce a run for his money – before she steps back and walks away to give them some privacy. He can’t get a read on the young girl, but to be honest, his focus is more on his ex anyway.

“Your security is shit,” Barbara says, by way of greeting. She doesn’t look away from the computer. “I’m putting up some more firewalls and adding some more proxys. We’re going to need higher bandwidth.”

“Uh, okay. I’ll get on that.”

“Already took care of it. Also, the next time you make encrypted files, don’t use your childhood pet elephant’s name as the password.”

He feels the need to defend himself on that. “There aren’t that many people that know about Zitka.”

“Still,” she counters, keying another binary command. “We’re now using the LexCorp’s network for spoofing. I thought you’d appreciate the irony.”

He smirks a little. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, yet,” she warns him. “I’m still not sure if I’m staying.”

He looks around at the room’s occupant, silent for a beat as he tries to figure out what to say. His mind trips over a dozen possibilities, from  _you couldn’t stay away, could you?_  to  _how the hell did you know we’d be here?_  He hadn’t expected Barbara to show up, at least not this soon without some sort of provocation. He finds himself feeling privileged and wary at the same time, like this is too good to be true and the rug is about to be pulled out from under him. Also, he hadn’t signed up for the rugrats to tag along. In some ways, despite not knowing them at all, he feels like he might already have these teenagers pegged. Unprivileged, definitely. Rough origins with all of them. They’ve either got false carefree smiles or the downright gruff attitudes that are all symptomatic of a misspent childhood, and they all definitely possess the thick skin that comes about from growing up around Bruce Wayne. Dick isn’t going to knock the stereotype; god knows he’s a product of it, himself.

“What changed your mind?” he asks Barbara.

She stops typing for a beat, head tilting only a few degrees to acknowledge him. Her glasses are perched on her sharp noise, and in the reflection of the lens he can see lines of blue code running down the computer screen that meld into the brown-greenness of her eyes. “I want to make something clear,” she finally says, turning to face him fully. “I’m not here for you, Dick. This isn’t about that. This isn’t even about me, really. It’s about Jason, and getting justice for what happened to him. But if I’m here, as long as _we’re_  here,” she says, motioning to the kids, “there’s going to be some ground rules.”

He nods, because he figured as much. “Do you have them all itemized and alphabetized already?”

“Don’t tease me about my organizational skills. It’s saved your ass more times than I can count.”

“I really hope not-teasing-you isn’t one of the official rules, because I already know I’m going to fail that one.”

She narrows her eyes. “You’re not nearly as funny as you think you are, Grayson.”

“Admit it, I’m  _adorable._ ”

She puffs out an exaggerated breath and turns back to her computers. There’s a tinge of redness spreading across her cheeks, and he doesn’t know if it’s from anger or from something else far more in his favor, but at least he’s getting a reaction out of her. “Rule number one,” she declares, no-nonsense, “this is about _justice,_  not revenge. Can you see the difference?”

Dick takes a beat to measure his words. “I’m not going to go off like a loose cannon again, Babs.”

“I really hope so, Dick, because if this goes south, I’m pulling your ass back from the fire, whether you like it or not. Even if that means pulling the plug on this  _entire_ operation.”

There’s a long pause after that, because he wants Babs to look him in the eye when he answers. He wants her to see the gravity with which he’s taking her words. Eventually, when silence has lingered for a beat too long, she finally pivots in her chair and lifts her eyes to him. They lock on each other, and he says, gravely, “You have my word.”

Barbara pauses, nods, then looks away again. “Rule two,” she forges ahead, “I need full disclosure. I can’t have you keeping parts of the plan a secret from the rest of us. I know the way you work, Dick. If we’re in this, we  _all_  deserve to know what you’ve got up your sleeve. No hidden agendas. No secret maneuvers.”

“You’re breaking my heart here, Babs. Where’s this distrust coming from?”

“Years of knowing the way your paranoid-riddled brain works,” she argues.

“Says the girl that just tripled my security measures.”

They pause, exchanging a significant look, both at a loggerhead.

“Man,” Tim whispers to Steph, behind them. “I don’t know if this is them flirting or fighting.”

“Both?” Steph offers, bewildered.

He’s fairly sure the kids hadn’t meant for everyone to hear that, but the way Barbara’s jaw tightens, it’s obvious that everyone did. Dick simply flashes a smirk down at Barbara, completely at ease with Steph’s assessment, but Barbara has that stubborn look in her eyes; the one that says he’s going to get a fight on everything she deems unacceptable, big or small — and no, that isn’t flirting.

_Call it what you want, Babs, but we’re in this together now._

It’s more than he could have hoped for.

* * *

“You were in cahoots with this, weren’t you?” Dick asks as soon as the door swings open, without preamble.

Wally blinks at him, a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. “As much as I like a good cahoot," he says around a mouthful of toothpaste, "I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Dick follows Wally back into his room, where the redhead makes a beeline for the bathroom. “The feisty redhead and the three musketeers in my suite?”

Wally stares blankly for a long second, then spits out into the sink. He rinses out his mouth, frowning. “I’m pretty sure M’gann would be okay with being called feisty, but can I not be in the room when you make that comparison to the rest of our friends? Which three are you talking about anyway? Conner, Zatanna, Raquel and Kaldur are four,” he pauses, thoughtful, “unless we’re sticking close to the canon of the books, and counting D’Artagnan as the unmentioned fourth musketeer, but dude, have you ever read that book? It’s actually a misogynistic piece of crap. Artemis made me take a class with her on—”

“Whoa, Wally, swing back round to Earth. You’re veering off topic here.”

“Oh, sorry. What was the topic?”

“Barbara, and Bruce’s replacement-mini-mes.”

Wally continues to stare. “At what point are you going to start making sense in this conversation?”

“Barbara is  _here_ ,” Dick grits out in explanation. “She’s in my suite, with Bruce’s adoptive kids.”

“Oh.  _Whoa.”_

“You seriously knew nothing about this?”

“Naw, man. You’d be the first person I’d tell, anyway. Babs actually came?” He grins. “Artemis owes me twenty bucks.”

“You made a bet on that?”

“Dude, of course. There’s only so many times I can say  _I’m right_  in our relationship. I need to have physical proof that it happened, and lording a twenty dollar bill over her head is a nice reminder.”

“Until she kicks you in the shin.”

Wally makes a face. “That does tend to happen a lot.”

Dick waits for him to finish getting ready. Despite the fact that they've only been booked in this hotel for a few hours, the bed is already a mess and Dick averts his eyes when he spies a pair of Artemis' unmentionables lying forgotten on the floor. Thankfully, the woman in question is already across the hall, and Dick is saved from further confirmation of whatever activities his best friends were up to when Wally walks back into the room. He shrugs on a jacket, grabs his watch and wallet, then frowns at the time. "Why am I always late to meetings?"

"Beats me," Dick says as they leave the room. "Considering how fast you are at everything, you'd think you'd be on time for something."

"See? Now that's just faulty logic," Wally argues.

“Is it true?” Conner interrupts them, intercepting the guys as they make their way across the hall. “Gordon is here? I haven’t seen her in years.”

"I guess we really are getting the whole gang back together," Wally offers.

“Yeah,” Dick says, a little wary, “with a few unexpected additions. Keep an eye on the kids she brought along? I’m sure they’re capable, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with them. All the roles in this plan are filled up, already.”

“I’m sure we’ll find something for them to do,” Wally offers in a light tone. “They’re Wayne trained. That’s gotta come in handy, right?”

“Whatever,” Conner says, roughly. “There’s such a thing as too many.”

Dick finds himself noting Conner’s frown with some extra scrutiny. Conner’s impressive physical stature is hindered by the dark circles rimming his eyes and the haggard look of little sleep. Conner has never been one to care much about physical appearance, but the way he carries himself now belies more than just apathy. Dick files away the observation for later.

Together, they walk back into his suite to find chaos – which, to be fair, is turning out to be the norm. Everyone has already found their way to the main room, and it feels more than a little congested. In the corner, Artemis is chatting animatedly with Stephanie. Zatanna, M’gann and Barbara are speaking in hushed whispers near the computers. Raquel is snacking on a bag of chips that’s probably been stolen from Tim, by the looks of it. Kaldur and Cassie seem content to stand side by side, serene and mute, unconsciously mirroring one another with arms folded over their chests.

Dick puts his fingers to his mouth and blows a loud whistle to get everyone’s attention, but it’s like herding cats. He’s going to have to invest in a blowhorn with the way things are progressing. When everyone finally calms down, he makes quick introduction for those unfamiliar with each other, but it’s nothing more than a cool aloof exchange of nods. Dick quickly gets down to business. He walks across to the sidewall, where one portion is largely made up of a screen that could dwarf a car.

“You all know why we’re here,” he announces, “but for those of us lacking the full information, consider this your debrief. Lex Luthor, Black Manta, and Vandal Savage. These are the Big Three. We aim to take them down and to destroy their criminal enterprise – an enterprise that thrives on drugs, dirty money, prostitution, bloodshed and international politics. Before we go any further, I wanna make it clear: if at any point you wanna walk away, you can. No questions asked. This is not going to be an easy con. I can’t force any of you to take on anything more than you feel comfortable with, but if all goes right, by the end of this, we’ll put away three of the most corrupt individuals in America.”

No one says anything, so Dick continues, clicking the screen to bring up the first image. The picture of a tall, muscular built man with a clean-shaven head appears, and it’s one that almost everyone in America can identify. “Lex Luthor is the most visible of the three,” Dick begins. “He is ruthless, efficient and creative. In addition to his personal vendetta against my family, I despise him from a purely ideological standpoint. He has always been a controversial figure in the public eye due to LexCorp’s corrupt business dealings, but he has also maintained political popularity. Rumor has it he’s thinking about running for President next election.”

Wally shudders, dramatically. “I’ve always hated politics, but that’s scary on a whole new level.”

Dick nods, and clicks for the next image. “Then we have David Hyde, more popularly known as Black Manta.” He looks to Kaldur for this. “Seeing as I’m hardly the expert on this topic, I’m going to hand it over to Kaldur for the full disclaimer.”

Kaldur nods, making his way towards the center of the room where he stands to look at the picture splayed up against the wall. Standing side by side with the image, it’s hard not to notice the physical similarities. They’re both strong, striking dark-skinned man, with the same defining features of pale green eyes and high cheekbones, but Black Manta has a more seasoned and hardened look to him. His hair is contrasted by the feature of dark hair speckled with grays around the temples, and even from just a picture, it’s clear he’s not a guy you wanna mess with.

“I have not been completely honest with you, my friends,” Kaldur begins, somberly. “Many of you know of my affiliation to Black Manta. He is my father. But what you cannot suspect is that, for the last four years, while most have assumed that I have retired from this business, I have instead been biding my time by joining my father’s organization. I have risen in ranks to become one of his most trusted lieutenants.”

“What?” several people gasp at once, while Dick steps forward quickly.

“It’s true,” Dick confirms, “But it’s not what you think.”

“Black Manta’s mob owns half the eastern seaboard,” Conner cuts in, angrily, “mostly by murder and drugs.”

“It’s true,” Kaldur confirms. “Which is why I vowed to take him down many years ago. But in order to do that, I knew I needed to be persistent and careful. His organization is massive. Infiltrating it has led me to a position where I know some of his darkest secrets.”

“And it’s because of Kaldur’s relentless efforts,” Dick continues, defending him, “that we have in our hands a way to take down all three big names. His work has been  _invaluable._ ” 

The others stare, but it’s Artemis that speaks up. “You never said anything,” she says to Kaldur, sounding hurt and more than a little concerned.

“I did not want you to get the wrong idea,” Kaldur says to her. “It has been my greatest shame to partake in my father’s business. I have… done things in order to gain his trust. Things that I will forever be ashamed of. I did not want you to see me like that.”

Artemis closes the space between them. “But you were all alone. We could have helped.”

“You’re helping now,” Kaldur insists, gently. “That is more than I could have dared to ask.”

The others mostly stare at Kaldur in continued surprise, but Wally’s suspicion is aimed in another direction. Dick uneasily shifts on his feet, gaze averted. He’s never liked lying to Wally, but Kaldur’s undercover operation was never his place to discuss. For years he’d been working with Kaldur in secret, as both an adviser and a fellow conspiratorial friend. It took a lot of energy to deceive Wally like that, an act of omission in his weekly visitations to the prison if not an outright lie. By the looks of it, Wally’s already pieced together the extent of the deception and he isn’t happy about it. 

It’s Barbara that blissfully breaks the silence. “Black Manta’s operation is…” she muses, looking impressed despite herself, “expansive. How deep have you gotten?”

“Deep,” Kaldur answers, simply. And rather ominously.

Barbara nods, thoughtful, and turns to others to inform, “Black Manta’s affiliations with Luthor and Savage is what cemented his rise to power. It’s a well-kept secret that Luthor provided Black Manta with funds back in the seventies, and in turn, whenever Luthor has needed anyone assassinated or silenced, Black Manta sent his men to finish the job. It’s been a symbiotic relationship. Kaldur could expose that nerve.”

“Where does Vandal Savage fit in?” Raquel asks, confused.

“That, truly,” Kaldur says, “is where we first must attack. They’ve all been in league with each other for many decades, and where one has risen in power, it has often been to the benefit of the other two as well.”

Dick moves the projection to the next image. Vandal Savage is a tall, muscular man with rugged features. The most prominent mark is the three pale scars across his face, which do a lot to overshadow his brown eyes and long black hair. It gives him a menacing look. In the picture, he’s wearing a long lapelless dark-blue coat with a red stripe on the edges, the colors of his country, but it’s a militaristic look that feels cold.

“Vandal Savage was recently named the Vlatan Ambassador to the US,” Dick informs. 

“Whoa, whoa,” Tim sits forward, frowning. “If he’s an ambassador, then that means he’s got diplomatic immunity. We can’t take him down for a crime. Any crime. Not in the US.”

“I know,” Dick acknowledges. “Which presents our first big hurdle. Savage has always used his international connections for ill-gotten gains. The worst is something Kaldur only recently discovered.”

Kaldur steps forward. “The Vlatan Kingdom is a relatively small country near the Caspian Sea. It would not be of much note in international circles, except that it houses oil repositories that could potentially be worth billions. The Queen of the kingdom is a young woman barely out of her teens.”

M’gann raises her hand, interjecting, “She’s twenty, as of last October. I should know. I impersonated Queen Perdita about two years ago in order to case a museum in Star City. Got a  _Rembrandt_  out of it.”

Dick grins. “That might come in handy, but unfortunately Queen Perdita is now known for sticking closer to her homeland. She’s entrusted Savage with too much power in her stead.”

Kaldur continues, “I’ve discovered plans that Lex Luthor and Black Manta mean to help Savage seize control of the Vlatan kingdom through a coup. After that, he can reap billions from an oil refinery pipeline that will run through the countryside. This pipeline will decimate the agricultural farmland sustaining the majority of the population in the country. Except for a small sliver of territory, which Savage has only agreed to spare because it presents an ideal environment for cocaine fields and a drug plantation.”

“With it,” Dick adds on, “Savage buys a country, and Black Manta a new ground of farmland for his drug cartels to grow their commodity.”

“Fuck me,” Raquel says, open mouthed. “I knew you guys were planning something big, but how the hell are we supposed to stop…  _all that?_  This isn’t a _Bond_  movie.”

“No one is saying that it is.”

“Good,” Raquel acknowledges, incredulous, “because the death toll on those movies is obscenely high.”

“No one is going to get killed,” Dick starts. “No one is going to get hurt. We’ve planned this and no one—”

“Don’t,” Barbara cuts in, eyes suddenly flashing. “Don’t you dare promise them that.”

Immediately, Dick raises a hand to stall her. “Babs, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes, you did,” she counters, heatedly.

After a beat, to his chagrin, he realizes she’s right. 

“Look, Dick,” Barbara says. “We’re here. We’re adults. We’re signing up for this voluntarily, but at least give them the facts straight. I don’t care how well you’ve planned this out. The odds on someone getting hurt is still high. Don’t promise them otherwise.”

In the periphery of his vision, he can see everyone else tensing with the sudden pressure in the room. Dick stands tall. He meets her gaze, already familiar with the stubborn and angry flair he sees there, and he would never admit it to anyone, not ever, but standing up against that flick of acid and steel is worse than any length of punishment he’s ever served in some correctional facility. It  _kills_  him that Barbara looks at him like that. 

“You’re right,” he says, tightly. “People could get hurt. People could get killed. The last op I ran ended up with you in that wheelchair and my little brother’s remains identifiable only through dental records. Things can go sideways, and I have no way to predict how.”

They stare at each other for a long beat, the tension shivering, until Barbara drops her gaze away to the side. 

“This isn’t the movies,” Dick continues, taking a breath. “Everybody here needs to know the risks. In order to get to all three of the big names, we first need to take down Vandal Savage and that’s going to be damn near impossible. Because first we need to get him stripped of his diplomatic immunity, and only the Vlatan Queen can do that. We have to expose him for the corrupt individual that he is, and then we need to get him thrown in prison, where either he’ll cough up damning evidence against Black Manta and Lex Luthor in exchange for leniency, or we find out another way to expose their conspiracy to defraud both the US government and the Vlatan kingdom. And we need to do all that in one month.”

“Why the time limit?” Steph asks, incredulous. “You think this plan isn’t challenging enough without putting an arbitrary deadline on it?”

“In one month,” Kaldur explains, “Savage will move to assassinate the Queen.”

Silence falls, but it’s the deafening kind. 

“I’m sorry, but this entire thing is  _insane,_ ” Zatanna says. “How do we pull off any of that? It sounds impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Artemis says, looking at the flagging spirits of everyone around her. “C’mon, guys. You know the old saying. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

“And what?” Raquel says, wryly, “We just gotta avoid being flattened underneath them?”

“Basically,” Artemis says, “Yeah.”

The others don’t look as enthusiastic. Barbara’s anger seems to have deflated a bit, but now she’s no longer looking Dick in the eye. Wally hasn’t said a word the entire time. And the others seem to be finally appreciating the marks as the largely insurmountable monsters that they are. All in all, the debrief isn’t going as well as he’d like, but instead just about as well as he’d been  _expecting._

“It's going to be as tough as you think,” Dick says, “but I asked you here because you’re the best. So here’s the punchline. What do a handful of con-artists, a magician, an explosive expert, some hitters, a pair of thieves, a hacker, and a get-away man all have in common?”

“We all know how to have a good time?” Wally offers, but to the trained ear, his voice is strained.

“That,” Dick agrees, and clicks for the next image on the projector, “and this…”

* * *

  
  


 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note. I've used a lot of artistic liberties in this AU regarding some of the villain's background. Vandal Savage is kinda an amalgomation of Count Vertigo and several other villains. Apologies about that, but I ended up choosing my villains before properly thinking through the story, and I had to make adjustments because of plot. Also, Lex Luthor is no longer Conner's half-dad/half-clone. Conner is an orphan. There is no connection between Lex Luthor and Conner in this fic. And the Joker is, obviously, not the one responsible for Jason Todd's death and Barbara' paralysis. The Big Three are responsible for that, because I felt that Dick, Barbara and the others needed a strong antagonist in this story, and the Joker is just the wrong villain entirely for an Ocean's 11 caper. He won't even be in this fic.

* * *

  
  
The preparations begin immediately.  
  
That night, Artemis scopes out the car dealership for two full hours before it closes. She sits in the front passenger seat, slouched low with a bulky pair of sunglasses shading her eyes. Despite the fact that Wally and Stephanie have spent the last hour talking a mile a minute, the small cramped sedan is for once relatively silent. Artemis is dressed comfortably in a pair of black combat pants, steel-toed Magnum boots and a dark T-shirt, over which she wears a green vest covered in pockets and zippers. Wally always calls it her “working girl outfit,” another one of the many ways he knows how to rile her up. It’s more utilitarian than fashionable, but then again she doesn’t normally take her fashion tips from a guy who thinks wearing the same worn t-shirt three days in a row is perfectly acceptable.  
  
Around seven in the evening, the dealership finally closes down. “Thank god,” Stephanie groans, from the backseat. “Another fifteen minutes and I might’ve resorted to  _I Spy_.”  
  
“I rock at that game,” Wally informs, idly.  
  
“Yes, it matches his maturity level perfectly,” Artemis adds.  
  
There’s a beat of comfortable silence, before Steph says, “So, how long have you two been together?”  
  
“Forever,” both answer, simultaneously. Artemis elaborates, “We’ve been with each other since we were fifteen. That’s basically eternity as far as I’m concerned.”  
  
“You don’t have to make it sound like a prison sentence,” Wally frowns.  
  
“Ah, babe,” she offers. She reaches across the console to squeeze his hand. “It’s more like life with parole,” she jokes.  
  
Wally rolls his eyes, but then Steph asks, “So why haven’t you two tied the knot?” and both freeze up so fast, you’d think cops had shown up with a fleet of S.W.A.T. cars and a bullhorn.  
  
“Uh,” Wally starts, laughing nervously. He does that thing where he scrubs the back of his neck, a gesture meant to mean embarrassment and guilt, but Artemis just rolls her eyes. “We’re not into the whole…” she explains, no nonsense, “domesticity thing.”  
  
Stephanie blinks. “You live together?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’ve been together more than a decade?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You have a dog together?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Steph laughs, “Guys, I got news for you. Ring or no ring, you two are more domestic than my parents ever were, and they were married for fourteen long bitter years. You’re, like, the poster couple for domesticity.”  
  
“We’re not that lame,” Artemis protests.  
  
“Yeah,” Wally adds on, awkwardly. “ _Lame._ ”  
  
Artemis catches something in his tone, and raises an eyebrow at him in confusion. Wally shifts uncomfortably behind the steering wheel until he spies the store manager finally clock out. “Oh, look, it’s that thing we came here to do.”  
  
It’s an obvious jump to change the topic. Artemis lets him have it, brow crinkled in confusion. Once the store lights go off, the pair exits the vehicle in unison. Stephanie is slower to get out, though she flashes an awkward grimace at Artemis in apology, like she realizes she’s somehow kicked a hornet’s nest when she’d just meant to be teasing. Artemis shakes it off with a shrug, because kids will be kids. It’s not a question they haven’t gotten a thousand and one times. It’s just the first time that Wally has responded to it with such obvious unease.  
  
Artemis busies herself by grabbing her bag of supplies from the trunk. The night air is cool and smells fresh, not at all like what she’s used to in Gotham City. Wally’s response makes her feel a little hot under the collar, though. It isn’t that they haven’t talked about marriage; Wally and Artemis are as committed to each other as any two people can be. They’ve just never needed some marriage certificate to prove it, and it’s probably just another mark of rebellion, of that bone-deep desire to buck the trend against conforming with the masses, but it’s something both of them have always agreed upon. Marriage? It’s for other people. She doesn’t need Wally to show her he’s committed that way. He does that in a thousand different ways every day.  
  
Still, if there’s any question as to whether Wally sometimes feels guilty for not putting a ring on her finger, she can see it by the way he avoids her gaze as they walk across the street. It’s stupid. She hates that he feels guilty about something they both see eye-to-eye on – and the idea that it’s not a  _total_  agreement only flitters across her mind briefly before she dismisses it. Artemis has always been shitty at spotting people’s tells, but she can read Wally like an open book. She doesn’t like to idea of things changing. The vulgarity or ridiculousness of being ashamed of what they have, something that’s pretty much perfect, is too stupid for words. No need to screw it up by rocking the boat, right?  
  
The trio make their way to the corner edge of the dealership, where Artemis pulls out her modified bow and arrow and shoots out the first security camera. That gets them close enough for Steph to hack into the other cameras with some computer program that Babs wrote up, and a few minutes later, Steph and Artemis are working in unison to break into the darkened dealership. Wally just sorta stands back and lets them do their thing, and normally Artemis would be annoyed by a tagalong, but Steph has some unfettered skills. A little more training, and it’s clear the girl could boost anything she wants.  
  
They enter the showroom, and it’s Wally that breaks the hush at the fleet of high-performance cars gleaming in front of them. “Oh, baby,” he mutters, mouth practically watering. “I want all of them.”  
  
“Only two,” Artemis warns, unnecessarily. “You know the plan.”  
  
Wally nods enthusiastically, distracted. She finds a fond smile growing on her lips as he flitters from one car to the next, and when he finally slides a hand across the hull of a light blue Ferrari 250 GTO, the same way he caresses her thigh after they make love, she knows he’s picked at least one of them. Problem is, the car is the newest make, one that’s been in production for only a month. No one even knows how to steal it, yet. Not even Artemis. Ferrari hosted a challenge last month in Monte Carlo when they’d premiered the car; two million to anyone that could break in. Many attempted, but no one claimed the prize.  
  
“This one,” Wally declares, looking at the car with lust in his eyes.  
  
She’d feel jealous, but it’s hard to deny him anything when he turns that gaze on her. Besides, Wally’s stupidly loyal and she knows he’s only a one-car type of guy anyway. He’ll drool over the foreign makes and models all he wants, but he’d rather be driving his yellow ’69 Camera any day of the week.  
  
(Yeah, she doesn’t need a ring on her finger. Not even remotely.)  
  
“So,” Steph says to her, gleefully. “Show me how to boost a Ferrari.”  
  
Wally steps back, and goes on the hunt for his second choice. Artemis crouches low, examining the outside before she slides into the driver’s seat like a knife in butter. She gets familiar with the feel, examines the details, then starts figuring out the dashboard.  
  
Artemis got out of the business years ago, but somehow she never lost her touch. When Stephanie gets into the passenger seat, Artemis can feel herself being watched like she’s some bug under inspection. For the first few minutes, it’s utter silence while Stephanie lets her work, but then her impatience (a common thing, Artemis is discovering) leads Steph to start suggesting weakness here and there. The point of assault is all wrong, though. Artemis knows if they don’t figure it out, one alarm and the whole squadron of police cars will come bearing down on them.  
  
It takes Artemis only nine minutes  _flat_  to figure out how to boost the car.  
  
“Oh, dude,” Stephanie breathes, afterwards. “I know you said you aren’t a marrying type, but I’m not gonna lie. I’m half-tempted to ask you to be my lawfully wedded wife because holy shit, that was  _awesome._ ”  
  
Artemis just laughs. Stephanie grins with a type of childlike enthusiasm, and the truth is, Artemis almost forgot what that felt like, that  _rush_. Even now, boosting a Ferrari is more about the nostalgia of boosting a car than it is about the fresh accomplishment. But on Stephanie, it’s all there on the surface. The excitement. The giddy feeling of invincibility. Artemis almost feels envious.  
  
“How’d you even figure that out?”  
  
“Gut instinct,” Artemis says. “I don’t know. I guess I always had a touch for it. My childhood was spent in a chop shop. I grew up in the business.”  
  
“Why’d you quit?”  
  
Artemis shrugs. “Life got too dangerous, y’know? I wanted something more. Something better.”  
  
Something mars Stephanie’s eyes, something akin to yearning. “Must be nice.”  
  
Artemis looks over. “The normal life has got its up and downs. You ever want out, all you gotta do is reach for it.”  
  
Stephanie shakes her head. “No way. I’m born for this type of life. I wouldn’t know how to do anything else.”  
  
“You don’t strike me as the type to be scared of the unknown,” Artemis remarks, pointedly.  
  
Stephanie stares, opening her mouth, but before she can say anything, Wally interrupts the moment by shouting enthusiastically from across the showroom. “Babe! I picked the other one!”  
  
“Inside voice,” Artemis mutters under her breath. She looks to Stephanie, exasperated. “He never remembers to use his inside voice.”  
  
Stephanie just grins.  
  
“C’mon,” she says to the younger blonde. “You can boost the next one.”  
  


* * *

  
  
The Hotel has a gym the size of a ballroom, complete with every sports equipment imaginable. It even has a boxing ring and an Olympic size swimming pool next door. The hotel staff all know that Conner is with the small group that bought out the entire executive floor, so they go out of their way to be extra nice and accommodating to him when he makes his way across the gym. He finds it annoying. He’d rather be in a dirty gym with beat up equipment and no one to bother him. It’s more honest. Instead, he finds himself staring at a free-standing punching bag shaped like a human torso, and every time he lands a hit, it gives this stupid automated response that critiques his punch. It just makes him hit it harder in annoyance.  
  
It’s an hour later that he realizes he has an audience. He looks up, finding the Cassandra Cain girl standing there, just watching him with this unnerving stillness. He swipes at the sweat above his brow, frowning. “Yeah?” he offers to her blank look.  
  
“Spar?” she asks, simply.  
  
As far as he knows, that’s the first words he’s ever heard her say. He doesn’t know if it’s a language barrier or something else entirely, but he gets the feelings she’s a quiet girl by nature and he should probably feel special for attracting her attention. Instead, he shifts awkwardly on his feet, ill at ease with the idea of sparring with a girl. Even one that Barbara called one of the best fighters she’s ever seen, better than even Dick – and Conner knows Dick can handle himself in a fight. Still, it’s the memory of fighting another Cassie, some eighteen-year-old blonde in a boxing ring, that leaves Conner feeling itchy.  
  
“Spar?” Cassie repeats, edging forward.  
  
Conner grimaces. “Maybe some other time.”  
  
But Cassie moves to intercept his path, insisting, “ _Spar._ ”  
  
This time, it sounds less like a question and more like a statement. Conner blinks at her, thrown. It’s probably a mark of how surprised he is by her insistence that he finds himself agreeing. He doesn’t like hitting women. Even if it’s just sparring. Even if that makes him anti-feminist or something – especially since all the women he knows are all more than capable of taking care of themselves. He just doesn’t like hitting women and he never will. It’s recently come to his attention that he’d rather get his ass handed to him than beat on a girl, and normally he’s one that prides himself on winning any given fight no matter what. But the next thing he knows, he’s stepping under the red ropes of the ring and facing off against Cassie.   
  
What was it with girls named Cassie anyway?  
  
The fight is quick and, in his case, particularly pathetic. When he finds himself lying flat on his back and staring up at a concerned looking Cassie, her face blurring in and out as his vision wavers, he realizes he underestimated several things. One, her agility. Two, her strength. And three, his ability to withstand a hit. The last one is probably more of an  _overestimation_  than one that went undervalued. He isn’t in the best shape of his life anymore. (And  _that’s_  another understatement.)  
  
He groans, pushing himself off the floor. Cassie offers him a helping hand, and he gets to his feet. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”  
  
“China,” she answers, as if it’s obvious.  
  
Conner nods. “Uh, yeah. Of course. I meant, who taught you?”  
  
“Triad,” she explains. “Assassins,” she clarifies.  
  
Conner stares.  
  
“Again?” she asks, readying her stance with guileless innocence.  
  
After a slow beat, Conner blinks and then nods. This time, because he knows better, he doesn’t hold back as much. She bobs and weaves away from his first blow but he catches her with an undercut that at least gets a grunt out of her. Then she rebounds twice as fast, a whirl of dark hair and streamlined muscles, coming back at him with a left hook that knocks him clean across the jaw. He hears something crack, and then someone scream, but he goes down before he can even figure out what happened.  
  
By the time he comes to, M’gann is hovering over him, frantically yelling at Cassie in a rushed frenzied speech. He can barely make out the words, “You can’t hit him like that. He’s got a condition!”  
  
“I am sorry,” Cassie says. She looks genuinely distraught like a skittish animal. “Didn’t know.”  
  
The first thing he thinks, ridiculously, is:  _M’gann is wearing a bikini._  It’s covered with a sheer top that doesn’t do a lot in covering up her skin. The pool, his mind foggily supplies – and she’s cradling his head in her lap. The images of both girls crouching over him bleeds a little, as his vision ebbs in and out, and he tries to undercut M’gann’s rant. “’s’not her fault,” he mumbles, shaking his head. He sits up, despite M’gann’s protests. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”  
  
M’gann clenches her jaw. “Maybe, but that doesn’t excuse you. God, you could have warned her.”  
  
It’s the same argument he’s been having with M’gann for years. His so-called recklessness. Whatever. If the doctors were right, he’d be dead twenty times over by now. They don’t know. They couldn’t. It’s all just a game of percentages and odds to them, but to Conner, it’s his  _life._  
  
A hotel staff member emerges with a first aid kit, and he tries to wave it off but one look at M’gann’s face and he knows better. He grits his teeth, and endures her judgment while she opens up the kit and pulls out a pair of butterfly band aides for the cut above his right eye. When she disinfects the wound, he hisses between his teeth and she distinctly lacks any sort of sympathy in her gaze.  
  
“How many fingers am I holding up?” she asks, holding up a thumb and two fingers.  
  
“Three,” he glares. “And my name is Conner. It’s March 15th, and the President of the United States might be a bald SOB next year if we don’t take him down first. Anymore questions?”  
  
M’gann sits back, frowning. For the first time, he notices that Cassie has made herself scarce. God, that girl moves like a ghost. He makes a mental note to find her later, apologize to her about M’gann freaking out at her.   
  
“You shouldn’t have yelled at Cassie like that,” he says. “She didn’t know any better.”  
  
A spark of guilt falls across her face, and M’gann turns, only now noting the absence of the other girl. She frowns, chewing her lower lip in a familiar sign of shame. “I’ll apologize later. You just… you just gave me a scare, is all.”  
  
“Story of our lives,” he remarks, callously.  
  
She flinches, then looks away, gathering the litter and putting things back into the first aid box. Despite the awkwardness of the moment, or even the fact that he’s intensely aware of how little M’gann is wearing, he finds himself wincing at the fact that they can’t carry on even one conversation without it exploding into a fight. This is the most words they’ve exchanged since reuniting, and of course it’s about his condition.  
  
“Conner,” she says, quietly. Her voice has gone that soft tone, so gentle it’s almost a whisper. “I wish you took better care of yourself.”  
  
He looks away and then closes his eyes briefly. “I wish for a lot of things, M’gann.”  
  
He walks away without once looking back at her.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sometime around five in the morning, with a wisp of a red dawn rising, Zatanna somehow gets roped into joining Raquel and Kaldur on the tops of a small building across from Savage’s non-diplomatic offices. The Vlatava Embassy is actually across the coast in California, but Savage prefers to do his business dealings on this side of the country. It’s a lucky break for them, because breaking into an embassy would have been messy. As it is, the main office of Savage’s business, a corporation that’s a convincing front for many of his shadier dealings, has enough guards and defenses to make Zatanna feel uncomfortably out of her element.   
  
She isn’t like the others. Her world is magic. It’s a trick and a snare, an illusion that convinces a viewer to believe in an impossible world of colors and the unexplained. Today, her world is full of gray. The gravel beneath their feet crunches loudly as she walks across the rooftop. There’s a lovely grand pavilion and a well-landscaped garden in the front of Savage’s building, but it’s also heavily defended at the gate by four armed guards in black tactical gear and what Zatanna internally refers to as  _big-guns-clearly-overcompensating-for-something_.   
  
There are nearly a dozen men in total, and those are just the ones visible from their vantage point. The chilly wind bites angrily at her ears, and it’s the only noise she can hear. Kaldur seems to be using the time to plan – she can tell, just by the way he keeps silent and his gaze is constantly searching. Zatanna trades a look with Raquel, but her normal partner in shenanigans is already a million miles away. Both of them are in the midst of scheming. Zatanna’s been talked into tagging along for the scouting with the promise of warm coffee and good company, but she can already tell her company today is going to be taciturn and analytical. It’s just another area where Zatanna feels like she’s the odd man out. The third wheel. She hates that feeling, but she’s a magician and her closest and oldest friends in the world are all criminals. She’s used to the feeling.  
  
“Well?” Zatanna offers, trying to be patient. “What do you guys think?”  
  
“If we need to break in,” Kaldur says, “it will be best to use a small number. Anything larger than a group of four will cause more trouble than it will be worth. We don’t want anyone harmed.”  
  
“Yeah, see, I think I can manage that,” Raquel replies, a hand resting over her protruding belly. She looks out through a pair of binoculars, lips pressed into a thin line. “I can set an explosive charge near the grove of trees on the east end. It’s far enough away that it won’t hurt anyone, but it’ll still make a big production. We set it off at the right time, and it’ll buy Tigress and the others at least ten, maybe twelve minutes of distraction time.”  
  
Zatanna rolls her eyes at the use of Artemis’ codename. There’s a lot of things about Dick that she admires, but one thing that she doesn’t miss about her ex-boyfriend is his ability to name things. He’s ridiculously immature about some things. He’s handed out codenames to everyone on the team, but Zatanna refuses to use one.  _Nightwing, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Robin, Spoiler…_  what were they playing at? Superheroes clad in tights and capes?  
  
“How long before the cops show up?” Raquel asks.  
  
“It depends on any number of factors,” Kaldur explains. “Based on distance to the nearest police station, I would think no less than six minutes. Let us hope that Kid Flash will be able to outrun them with the GTO.”  
  
“He will,” Raquel says, wryly, a little reluctantly. Raquel and Wally have always had a teasing relationship, full of butting heads, but they’ve always respected each other's skills too. “I’m more concerned about sending in Tigress by herself.”  
  
“Suberboy will join her for protection,” Kaldur informs.  
  
Before Zatanna can comment on that, the cell phone in her pocket starts vibrating. She picks it up and retreats a fair distance, and when she answers it, her agent is on the other end. “Zatanna,” he says, relieved. “I’m glad I caught you. I’ve got bad news.”  
  
“Uh oh. What?”  
  
“That Metropolis show you wanted booked for a month from now? I don’t know if I can sell it on such short notice.”  
  
“Listen, Bob, I really need that show.” It’s part of Dick’s plan, a crucial part. “It has to be on that specific date in Metropolis. No exceptions.”  
  
“This close to the date, we need some major publicity. People like you a lot, but we need an extra selling point. Something that can catch headlines.”  
  
Zatanna freezes, a dark thought creeping up on her. The blood doesn’t drain from her face, because of course it doesn’t. Because she’s better at covering her tells than that, but something about her emotions must bleed through because Raquel looks over, concerned. Zatanna tells her agent to hold for a second while she brings the phone down, limp in her arms as she comes to terms with a reckless idea. She always knew this would happen, that it’d come to a point where she’d need to confront this particular haunting past. She just hadn’t been expecting it to be like this.   
  
“What?” Raquel says, approaching her with concern. “Zatanna, what is it?”  
  
“The agent needs something for the publicity. He needs a trick that’ll catch headlines.”  
  
There’s a moment of confusion, then Raquel’s face pales. “No,” she breathes out, knowingly. “Zatanna, you  _can’t._ ”  
  
“What is going on?” Kaldur asks.  
  
Zatanna merely lifts the phone back to her ear, declaring, “Tell them if they book me, I’ll perform the trick that killed my father.”   
  
Kaldur’s eyes widen, Raquel curses out loud, and there’s nothing but dead silence on the other end of the phone for a long beat. “Are you sure, Zatanna?” her agent asks.   
  
“Won’t that sell headlines?”  
  
“Well, um… yes. I could sell that. But, uh—”  
  
“Then book it. There’s nothing more to discuss.”  
  
She hangs up before getting a response, and turns to find both Kaldur and Raquel staring at her. The former with sympathy, and the latter with frustration. Raquel has always been supportive as a friend, but she’s never understood the overhanging need that Zatanna has had to reenact the trick that claimed her father’s life.   
  
It’s called the Aquatic Coffin. It would have been her father’s crowning achievement. The illusion begins simply enough: a large, lidded tank made of acrylic glass. The tank is filled with water and the magician climbs inside, takes a deep breath, and submerges himself. The tank’s lid is closed and secured with padlocks and chains wrapped around the tank, with no source of air or escape. There’s a history of performers that have died doing this trick, dating back to the late nineteenth century. Her father had tried to master a new, better form. He’d somehow devised a way that allowed him to stay underwater for a full seven minutes. It had astounded the audience and stumped fellow magicians across the world. Especially since everyone knew that Zatara was a man that didn’t use the standard tricks or illusions. He was old fashioned, and genuine. Some even said he was the truest performer to ever grace the trade.   
  
Zatanna never figured out how he did half his tricks; he died when she was only fifteen years old and a fledging in her own training. The last time he practiced the Aquatic Coffin maneuver, something had gone wrong and she’d found him dead hours later, still trapped inside his own tank. It’s an image that haunts her to this day.   
  
“You do not have to do this,” Kaldur tells her. “We can figure out another way to execute the final stage of the plan. We do not need it to be at your show. We’ll find another way.”  
  
“No,” Zatanna says, shoulders straightening, determined and steadfast. “This is why you brought me onboard. You wanted me to give them a show. I’ll give them one they’ll never forget.”  
  


* * *

  
  
“No,” Dick declares.  
  
“You’re not even hearing me out,” Tim protests.   
  
“Kid, I’ve been listening to you for the last fifteen minutes, and I’m telling you –  _no._ ”  
  
“I’m trained just like you,” Tim insists. “Bruce taught me everything you know. I mean, yeah, I’m not an acrobat, but I know martial arts. I’ve learned stealth and strategic planning. I know four different languages, and even Bruce has acknowledged my deductive reasoning and problem solving skills as advanced. You can use me.”  
  
“And I will,” Dick says, “As soon as I figure out a place for you.”  
  
“You say that, but I know you’re treating Steph, Cass and me like we’re kids. Like we need babysitting. Barbara brought us along because we can be of value, but only if you use us.”  
  
“Look, the first phase of the plan is already in motion. Maybe after we take down Vandal Savage? I might need you in a month, but right now, you’re going to have sit tight and let the rest of our plan play out.”  
  
Tim doesn’t say anything to that, but Dick can tell by one look that he’s frustrated and insulted. The silence blooms out between them until it’s thick and heavy, clouding the room. It’s to be expected, this resentment. Dick never asked for the teenagers to come along, and now that they’re here, he doesn’t know what to do with them. They’re too many players, and some of ‘em are getting along just fine, cohering together like a well-oiled machine alongside the rest of his friends. But the roles in his operation have already been cast.  
  
It’s been only a week since they started preparing for the first stage of the plan. To take down Vandal Savage, it’s a simple enough theory: expose his dirty secrets to the Queen and she’ll have no choice but to remove him as an ambassador. Kaldur acquired information from his undercover work that Savage keeps plans and valuable intel in a secure facility inside his office building. They just have to steal it and hand it over to the Queen as proof. And to do that, they need thieves and hitters. Dick trusts Artemis and Conner to get in and get out. He trusts Wally to be the get-away guy. He knows that Raquel will provide a distraction, and that Kaldur will keep Savage busy on the night of the theft by resuming his role as Black Manta’s trusted lieutenant. Zatanna and M’gann have other roles to perform for the second stage of the plan, things that need to be prepared for the final takedown of Luthor and Black Manta.  
  
But the kids are an extra variable in the equation. Dick doesn’t know what to do with them. He’s not trying to be cruel. This isn’t some petty form of resentment against the kids that Bruce replaced him with. Dick  _honestly_  doesn’t know what to do with them.  
  
“You know,” Tim finally says, sounding disappointed. “When Barbara asked us to come along, I was excited. Finally, I’ll get to see Dick Grayson in action, the guy I’ve always looked up to. Bruce has always seen you as the perfect protégé.”  
  
“I’m not,” Dick says, hiding a flinch.  
  
The description is so wrong on so many levels, he doesn’t even know where to begin. He has no idea how to handle Tim’s hero-worshiping, other than the fact that it makes him feel uncomfortable.   
  
“Maybe, maybe not,” Tim replies, quietly. “But you definitely learned a lot from him. Like how to be stubborn. His word is law, too. Once he made up his mind, you can’t change it.”  
  
This time, Dick flinches outright. “I’m not as stubborn as Bruce,” he protests. “I’m just—”  
  
“Methodical? Calculating?” Tim offers, pointedly.  
  
That’s the nicest way of saying he’s exactly like Bruce.  
  
Tim nods softly, then leaves while Dick is still trying to muster up a response.   
  
The next few hours blur as Dick fixates over the words. He’s  _nothing_  like Bruce. He can’t be. The sense of self-awareness and conviction is stripped from him, though, leaving only a nagging uncertainty in its wake as he examines his actions over the last week. Hell, over the last four years and maybe even beyond that. He loves Bruce, even despite their fractured relationship and bruised egos. He loves him, but he never wants to  _be_  him. Once or twice, when he was younger, he considered himself to be approaching the same league as Bruce. But things had unfolded in such a way and life had unceremoniously handed Dick a hard lesson: his feelings were always going to get in the way. It’s perhaps one of Dick’s greatest flaws. So, to be accused of the opposite is something that sits uneasily on him for the rest of the day.   
  
Barbara finds him like that at dinner, brooding over his third bottle of foreign-make beer, tall and narrow-necked, taken from the hotel minibar and marked up three-hundred percent. She wheels herself into his room without knocking, mainly because his suite is the hub of operations, but the truth is their history is ripe with a distinct lack of propriety. Barbara has always just barged into his room without announcing herself, even long before they dated. He never really protested the lack of privacy, which is probably why she keeps doing it.   
  
“Hey,” she says, head tilted to one side. “Tim said you guys had a disagreement?”  
  
Dick snorts, lifting the bottle to his lips and tugging another long sip from it. Barbara just lifts an eyebrow, then wheels closer. Her hair is knotted messily at the nap of her neck and she has a computer tablet in her hand. She’s wearing the same Gotham University sweatshirt that she had five years ago, but the colors are muted now, frayed and distilled because of repeated washing.   
  
“Rough night there, hot shot?” she asks, eyebrow lifted.  
  
“Not really. Same old, same old.”  
  
“So then why are you making a meal out of beer?”  
  
“Do you think I’m like Bruce?”  
  
Barbara blinks at him. “What?”  
  
“Do you think I’m like Bruce?” he repeats. “Or worse than him? I keep trying to figure out if I’ve somehow become worse than him. Because at least he gets results through his methods. What do I have to show for my efforts? Four years in Gotham Penitentiary, that’s what.”  
  
“Where is this all coming from?”  
  
“Tim made a comparison,” he informs. “I don’t think he intended it to be that insulting. Or maybe he did. I don’t really know the kid.”  
  
“Stop calling him a kid,” Barbara chides. “He’s older than you were when we first started conning. And Tim never means anything to be an insult, not really. He’s unerringly sweet. Like a panda, or something.”  
  
Dick snorts again, half in amusement, but maybe she’s right. He really doesn’t know the kid— _Tim_. Probably because Dick hasn’t tried that much.   
  
Barbara grabs a bottle from the minibar and joins him near the kitchen counter. He means to say something after she opens the cap and takes her first swallow, but his higher-functioning is only half-engaged, and he finds himself staring at Barbara instead. She’s… _beautiful_ , but it’s a soft sort of look that she tries to hide. She keeps trying to cover it up around him, concealing it behind a no-nonsense attitude and a frowning disposition. But he still sees it. He knows she’s putting up a cold front purposefully just to keep him at arm’s length. It’s been a week, and despite his best efforts, their conversations have centered entirely about business.  
  
“Tim is right about something,” Barbara says. “You could use him, and Stephanie and Cassie. You’ve wasting resources.”  
  
“Maybe we’re  _all_  like Bruce, a little. Maybe we don’t even realize it.”  
  
She gives him a baleful look. “You know, you’re kind of a maudlin asshole tonight.”  
  
“I am more than  _kind of_ , Babs, don’t sell me short.”   
  
That gets a laugh out of her, and she shakes her head and smiles a little despite herself. They exchange a look, and he wonders what she sees when she looks at him; he sees flickers of the girl he used to know, and he hopes she sees the guy she feel in love with – maybe just with a little bit more humility.   
  
She’s the first to turn away. “Don’t look at me like that.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like…  _that,_ ” she says, flustered.   
  
She wheels away, and he tries to stop her with a quick, weightless, “Okay, okay. I promise I won’t look at you like… whatever. Just slow down. Jeeze, do you always have to run from me? I’m not that scary.”  
  
“I’m not scared,” she throws back, more defensive than he’d been expecting.  
  
It’s his turn to lift an eyebrow. “Okay, wasn’t really saying you were. It was just a joke.”  
  
She’s a little red in the cheeks now, and it’s weird that they’ve transgressed through several emotions in a scant matter of minutes, but he can’t even  _name_  half of them.   
  
“C’mon,” he implores, reaching for anything that’ll get her to stay. “Have dinner with me. Otherwise all I’ll have is dubious amounts of alcohol with labels I can’t even pronounce.”  
  
“That beer is from France. You know French.”  
  
“Yeah, exactly. I’m having French beer. That’s just  _wrong_.”  
  
“Then grab something else you want.”  
  
“I want  _company,_ ” he says, throwing his best puppy-dog look at her. It has a good track record of effectiveness, though it’s a little rusty. “C’mon, Babs. I hate eating alone.”  
  
She looks like she’s mustering up excuses in her head, but it also looks like it’s a failing effort. “Well,” she allots, easing a little. “I suppose it would be a crime to leave you on your own tonight.”  
  
There’s a knock at the door that interrupts the moment.   
  
Dick has never been the type of person to believe in a higher power, but clearly something up there has a perverse sense of humor or just has a dead-set mentality against him having any sort of fun. Either way, he’s unamused when Barbara turns to answer the door. Tim, Cassie and Steph are standing in the hallway, a bit awkwardly.  
  
“Ah, good,” Barbara says, like she’d been expecting them. “You came.”  
  
“I didn’t really know it was an option,” Tim mutters under his breath, but beside him Steph shoves an elbow into his stomach and the kid grunts. He recovers, quickly, “Uh, yeah. I just, figured we could hang.”  
  
“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Barbara says, in a false cheery voice that fools no one. She turns back to Dick, smiling like the cat that ate the canary. “What? You said you wanted company.”  
  
He smells something fishy in the air, and the instinct only grows when the trio enter his place and crash onto various spots in his living room without ceremony. He thinks this might be an orchestrated move by Barbara of putting a buffer between them, because what kills any potential for a romantic mood faster than a bunch of teenage chaperones? But he suspects it’s larger than that, that underneath all her rigidity and distance, Barbara is still that girl that always looked out for him. When a few minutes later, room service delivers five meals that he never ordered, he realizes the ambush, and that whether he likes it or not, he’s going to spend some quality time with his extended adoptive family. He doesn’t know whether to be touched or annoyed.   
  
At first, it’s as clumsy an experience as he’d been expecting. Stephanie starts the evening by trying to steal one of the open bottles of beer on the counter, but she spits it out on the coffee table after one distasteful sip. Barbara just calls everyone into the main living area and forces some sort of pecking order in the food distribution before the world descends into anarchy. Dick, always one to be sociable, tries to make the best of the situation.  
  
But Cassie is silent, Tim is withdrawn, and Stephanie makes up for the silence by chatting up a storm and making inappropriate jokes at the expense of Barbara and Dick. He doesn’t really mind, especially when it gets Barbara more flustered than it does him. But then it happens, gradually and indistinct over the course of the evening. At some point, he stops thinking of these kids as Bruce’s proxies for him, and he starts interacting with them. Like,  _really_  interacting with him. He realizes that Stephanie is bright as she is loud, and when she starts talking about boosting a Ferrari, he finds himself flashing back to Artemis at that age and the comparison is only a good one. Tim starts loosening up, goaded into conversation by Barbara and Stephanie until he’s telling a few humorous stories about Alfred’s escapades in trying to get Bruce to cook in recent years. Cassie remains silent for the most part, until Tim and Steph start a game of  _rock, paper, scissors_  to see who gets the last slice of cake, and Cassie just sweeps in under and steals it while no one is looking. Dick flashes her an approving smile, and she ducks her head and looks away, blushing a little.   
  
 _They’re just like us,_  he realizes.  _Just like we used to be when we were teenagers and the world was at our fingertips._  
  
He looks across to Barbara, catching her in a stare. Dick stops waiting for the awkwardness to descend on them again, and just breathes in the moment for once. It’s a gorgeous one, in the midst of a loud dinner with boisterous kids, but suddenly everything quiets, everything but the sound of his breathing and the look in Barbara’s eyes.  
  
It's a looks that says, “See? They’re not so bad. You just gotta give ‘em a chance.”  
  



	9. Chapter 9

 

The morning of the heist, Artemis goes through the final debrief with Conner, Barbara and Dick. The group is seated in a tight cluster around the long oblong table, and Barbara seems to be in charge of this little session. Artemis thinks it’s entirely unnecessary, because everyone knows their roles by now, inside and out, backwards and forwards. Then Barbara pulls open a neat titanium briefcase with some interesting metal goggles in them, and Artemis reneges on her complaining — because, _oh, toys._

“I designed these myself,” Barbara tells her. “Night-vision capability, and it has a camera affixed to the rim so that I can see and hear everything you do. I made it for a cat-burglar I know, actually.”

“Anyone we know?” Conner asks, curious.

“A friend of Bruce’s,” Barbara elaborates, vaguely, exchanging a significant look with Dick.

Artemis raises an eyebrow. A cat-burglar friend of Bruce? Gossip travels fast in their little circle, and it’s no well-kept secret that there’s only person alive that’s ever conned Bruce Wayne out of anything. And that’s Selina Kyle. Artemis knows the thief took the billionaire for more than a few hundred grand almost a decade back, and since then it’s kicked off a game of cat and mouse that Dick likens to foreplay. She could probably confirm it from Stephanie or one of the other kids that Bruce and Selina have been dating, but Artemis isn’t really one to idly gossip. 

“Okay, bad news first,” Barbara debriefs, wheeling around to face Artemis. “According to all the intel we’ve gathered over the last week, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Raquel will plant a small explosive in the east grove of trees at precisely 8:03 pm, when the guards go through their shift rotations. A simple G4 mainliner, double-coil, backwound, quick fuse with a drag under 20 feet. I have no godly idea what any of that means, but Raquel assures me it’ll do the job.”

Dick picks up, “You and Conner have to break in and make it to the third level of the building. I’ll remain on the ground floor in the west side, ready to jump in as backup for you two if necessary. I’ve got my own alternative way inside and out of the facility. Wally will be waiting as a get-away man on the south side. You two make your way to him once you’ve intercepted the package.”

Conner confirms, “Just us five.”

“I’ll be your eyes and ears back here,” Barbara agrees, “But yeah, that’s it. I’ve got the dossiers on every guard on duty that night. They’re all ex-military, most special forces.”

“Which is why you’re sending me in,” Conner supplies, helpfully. “A hitter.”

“Well, that and your good looks,  _Superboy_ ,” Dick adds, wryly.

“Ugh,” Artemis says, annoyed. “Can we not do the codenames? I still can’t believe you’re naming me  _Tigress._ ”

“Wally came up with that,” Dick offers, waving a hand in surrender. “Take it up with him.”

Artemis narrows her eyes, already planning secret retribution against her boyfriend, while Barbara continues on in an amused voice, “Anyway, sidestepping the awkward issue of disturbing pet names, the biggest threat in the building that night is just two people. They’re head of security.” She pulls up two photos side-by-side on her window. “Tommy Terrance and his twin sister, Tuppence Terrance. They’re nicknamed “The Terror Twins” and with good reason.” 

Artemis scrutinizes the photos, and it paints a clear picture of why they might be trouble. Tommy has the build of a tank. He has blond hair, multiple tattoos, multiple earrings, and he looks just plain  _mean._  His twin sister has a slender build, but the striking resemblance is still hard to dismiss between the two. Their clothing even matches, which Artemis thinks is a bit much: both wearing white sleeveless shirts, black pants, military boots and red suspenders. 

“He’s muscle, and she’s…” Barbara grimaces, “well, she’s freakishly strong too. They’ve both security experts, and have been implicated in four murders in the last six years. The charges never stuck.”

Conner trades a look with Artemis, and nods, self-confident, “We can handle them.”

“First, you need to get inside,” Dick cautions, “which anyone can tell you is going to take more than just a nice smile. Kaldur thinks Savage keeps his sensitive information within his personal computer on the third floor. The elevators won’t move without an authorized six-digit personnel code that changes every forty-eight hours, and the stairs are heavily monitored and guarded.”

"But Kaldur will make sure that Vandal Savage is preoccupied that night," Barbara adds. "You won't have to worry about him walking in. He'll be across the city looking over something for Black Manta. Kaldur made up some story about a new factory location."

It doesn’t escape Artemis’ notice that both Barbara and Dick are playing a duet in the debriefing. She studies them both with a subtle scrutiny, eyes darting between them, because Barbara’s an immoveable object to Dick’s unstoppable force and it’s been forever since she’s seen them like this. It’s… refreshing.

“Well,” Artemis supplies, helpfully, "Good thing you’re sending me in. I'm pretty good at getting into restricted areas.”

“I have a detailed blueprint of the building,” Barbara says to her. “But since you won’t have time to fieldstrip the power-box and hack into their security on-site, I won’t have eyes and ears inside for you. You’ll have to make it to his office on your own, but I’ve developed a fairly simple pin-drive that you can use to hack into Savage’s computer. Download the file marked, “ _Incendiary,_ ” and get out.” 

“Get in, get out,” Dick reinforces. “A simple smash and grab job.”

Artemis finally exchanges a look with Conner. “Well, this sounds like a piece of cake.”

“Oh yeah,” Conner agrees, wryly. “Looking forward to it.”

* * *

It’s nearly dark by the time she starts getting ready; it’s raining outside, but it’s slow like a drizzle. Artemis indulges in a long shower under the blissful stream of hot water with the  _perfect_  water-pressure. She’s really gotta give props to Dick on choosing the hotel. It’s got all the luxury she’s never really afforded herself before, and it’s a nice change of pace from the warehouses and the other rundown places where she used to plan her cons. By the time she emerges from the shower, the room is filled with steam. The entire glass is fogged up. She wraps a thick towel around her, and wipes off the condensation on the mirror with her hand to create a circle. Her hair is limp and wet, but she looks… good. Flushed. Excited. She looks like she’s practically  _glowing._

Artemis can feel the rush of the upcoming job, and it makes her feel alive. She’d forgotten the feeling. Jittery nerves are an issue, but she’s an old pro at this. So what if it’s been a few years? It’s like a riding a bike, right? 

She starts blow-drying her hair, flipping her long blonde locks upside down, and when she looks back into the mirror, Wally is standing there. He’d probably been enjoying the view of her bending over in nothing but a towel, but before she can throw a teasing remark at him, she gets a good look at him in the mirror. His head is tilted to one side, hands jammed in his pockets, and he’s wearing loosely fitted washed jeans and a red long-sleeved shirt under a short-sleeved yellow one. His silhouette outlines the door, leaning against the doorframe with practiced insolence like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Suddenly, she doesn’t know who’s checking out whom more. Wally has never been model-material, because he doesn’t care about the state of his clothes enough to ever be that vain, but she swears he could probably be an underwear model with no problem whatsoever.

“Just like old times, huh?” she tells him, without turning around.

Wally just smirks. That smile could drop her at a thousand paces. She feels something warm bloom in her belly. When she was a teenager, the thrill of the con was one of the only things that made Artemis feel invincible. Now, she’s smarter and more mature and she’s got Wally to give her that feeling.

He walks over, wrapping her up in his arms from behind. “So I was thinking—”

“Careful with that. You could sprain something.”

“Ha, ha,” he tells, flashing her a quieting look through the mirror. “About what Stephanie said, earlier. About our…  _domesticity_.”

She stiffens, because the way she remembers the conversation, it’d been about _marriage._  “Yeah?”

“Would it be so bad?” Wally asks, hesitantly. “Us, being…  _officially_  domestic?”

She pretends not to notice the tension in his body, like he’s wound tight and stiff even though he’s trying to hide it. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what he’s thinking, or where this is coming from. She knows him too well. He always gets a little carried away right before she goes out on a job. It’s been years since they’ve done this routine, but she still remembers how worked up he gets. She used to think it was sweet that he cared so much, but in her youth she probably hadn’t appreciated how  _intense_  he got about it. It drove him crazy to see her going out on a limb in some crazy, harebrained scheme. To his credit, he was always smart enough to know voicing such objections or trying to prevent her from doing what she loved would have been foolhardy and too controlling. But when she’d brought up getting out of the life four years ago, he couldn’t have jumped at the opportunity fast enough.

And now he’s talking about the big “M” word.

Artemis turns around and wraps her arms about his neck. “Talk to me after the heist,” she tells him. “We always think clearer afterwards. Like post-coital haze, or something.”

He smirks. “Fair enough.”

His hands fall to her hips, and she allows him to flatten her against the bathroom sink. His kiss is patient, but fevered, and it’s seductively familiar because Wally knows  _exactly_  how to kiss Artemis to get her weak in the knees. For a guy that likes everything fast, sometimes it’s absolutely maddening how slow and sweet he can be.

“I’ll be fine,” she tells him, because it’s something he needs to hear. “I know you’re worried. I’m not going in alone, remember? Conner’s got my back.”

There’s a flicker of doubt in his eyes, and she knows what he’s thinking. Everyone’s noticed that Conner isn’t quite as up to his game as he used to be, but then again, who among them can cast the first stone? Wally and Artemis have been out of the game for years, and Dick has been in prison. Barbara went legit, and Raquel and Zatanna have been bidding their time with shows in Vegas. Aside from Kaldur, who fooled everyone with his  _I’m-retired_  gimmick, and M’gann who couldn’t stop grifting if her life depended on it, they’re all a little rusty. She knows Wally is worried about that.

“Dick planned this out,” she reminds him. “He knows what he’s doing. What could go wrong?”

Wally makes a face. “Don't say that! You'll jinx the mission! And besides, Dick doesn't tell us everything.”

Artemis pulls back, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look, I love the guy. He’s my best friend. But I know him too well. He’s hiding something about the plan. He always does.”

She pauses, then says softly, very hesitantly, “This is about Kaldur, isn’t it? You’re upset Dick didn’t tell you about his undercover work.”

She’s been noticing the slight tension between Wally and Dick for days, but she hadn’t said anything because she’d been hoping it’d blow over or they’d work it out it in the same knucklehead ways those two usually do.

“Wally,” she presses. “On a scale of Gandhi to the Hulk, how mad are you about that?”

Wally makes another face. “You can’t compare a fictional character to a non-fictional one, babe. It fucks with the scale.”

_“Wally.”_

It takes less than two-seconds flat for Wally to fold. “Well, yeah, I’m a little frustrated,” he admits, tightly. “I  _am_  his best friend. I thought I was his partner in this, and turns out – nope. He’d been hiding a huge freakin’ piece of the plan from me all along. What else is he hiding?”

She rolls her eyes. “Kaldur made that call, not Dick.”

“It’s Dick’s gameplan,” Wally insists. “He could have told me everything. He didn’t. And we put our trust in him to lead us. It’d be nice if the trust went both ways.”

“It does,” she insists. “Have you talked to Dick about this? Because I think this is something that can be resolved easily with a conversation. Just use your mouth, Wally. God knows you get enough practice with it.”

He rolls his eyes. “You always know how to be simultaneously insulting and uplifting.”

“It’s a gift,” she agrees, then drops her voice suggestively, “And I meant that as half a compliment anyway. Talking isn’t the only thing you do with your  _mouth._ ”

He slowly grins, eyes lighting up with pride, his fingers playing with the threads at the edge of her towel. “Yeah? And you’re a fan of the other thing?”

“Your  _biggest._ ”

(There isn’t a whole lot of talking after that.)

* * *

She waits for Raquel’s signal on the rooftop opposite Savage’s building, shifting uncomfortably under the heavy weight of the Kevlar vest. Wally forced it on her at the last minute before he split, and she hadn’t had time to protest the functional addition to her burglar outfit. Artemis isn’t the only one with the vest. They’ve all got some variation of the same black gear on, including matching masks to hide their identities. Still, it pretty much defeats the purpose of her wearing any synthetic stretch fabric.

“C’mon, already,” Conner mutters beside her, impatient. “The explosion should have gone off by now.”

“Give it another minute,” she tries, but she’s just as impatient.

It’s only another thirty seconds, actually.

The explosion sounds like fireworks, at first. The burst of bright color and the yellow mushroom of a fire is unmistakable, though. On the east side, the grove of trees light up, catching fire. The guards immediately hit the alarms. Artemis uses the cover of the noise to aim her bow at the rooftop across the street. She releases the grappling hook, and it jets across three hundred feet to land and snare a stern lead pipe on top of Savage’s building. The thick fiber rope between her bow and the grappling hook stretches tight, and Conner works quickly on securing one end to hooks in the floor of the rooftop. He tests the tensile strength, and then nods at her.

“Ladies, first.”

“Wait,” Artemis says, halting. After a beat of uncertainty, she snaps and makes a quick decision. She strips off the Kevlar vest and abandons it against the ledge. It fucks with her agility. She can’t do half her jumps and gymnastic flips with the cumbersome vest on. “Don’t tell Wally,” she says to Conner.

Conner doesn’t say a word, but he sighs heavily in a way that she knows means he’s agreed.

Artemis goes first, zip-lining from one rooftop to the next. By the time Conner lands beside her on the Savage building rooftop, the guards below have locked down the outer gates and are forming an outer perimeter defense that they’ve already breached.

They work silently together, swiftly. It’s funny that Artemis had been fighting off nerves before this, because it really is like riding a bike. The thrill of the heist. The pumping of adrenaline. The feeling of calm certainty in one’s ability. Conner looks like he’s getting a kick out of it, too. He takes out the first pair of guards they encounter on their way down to level three, and grins afterwards at her. Never one to be outdone, Artemis flattens another pair coming out of the restroom. 

_“Tigress,”_  Dick’s voice comes over her earpiece,  _“Report your status.”_

“Superboy and I are inside. Making our way towards level three.”

_“Acknowledged. I’m situated on the west side. If you need me, I can breach the perimeter in less than two minutes and be with you guys in twice that. Kid Flash is waiting for rendezvous on the south end.”_

_“Patiently,”_  Wally adds to the conversation.  _“But feel free to rush anyway.”_

The building has six floors. There are two dozen guards on duty tonight. Most are outside, but a few are locking the building up tightly in a futile effort to secure the facility.

“Relax, babe. ETA on the package,” Artemis estimates, “is four minutes. It looks like we won’t need your backup on this after all, Nightwing.”

_“Acknowledged,”_  Dick says.  _“Tell me if that changes. Oracle, what’s the status on the fire department and cops?”_

Babs’ voice comes on, _“I rerouted traffic for a congestion pile up on Fourth Street. That’ll buy you another four or five minutes tops. But you’ll have company in roughly around twelve minutes, give or take a few.”_

“Got it,” Conner confirms, looking to Artemis. “We’ll be out of here by then.”

_“Good,”_  Dick says.  _“Then quit wasting time talking to me. Good luck.”_

Shit hits the fan shortly after that.

Conner and Artemis pick up their speed, racing to cover the last bit of distance to Savage’s office. When they turn the corridor, she’s caught off guard with the nuzzle flash of a firearm going off. Conner tackles her to the floor before she even knows what’s happening, and it’s only when his body is shielding hers that she realizes they’re under attack. A barrage of bullets bite into the wall above their heads. She crawls out from under Conner to hide behind a bend in the corner.

Conner peers around the corner, and gets a few close shaves for his efforts, but he jerks back in time and informs, “The Terror Twins.”

Artemis grimaces. She’d been hoping to avoid them.

“Hello, lovelies!” Tuppence Terrance calls out, loudly, sounding smug. “Come out with your hands up, and I promise I’ll keep from riddling your bodies with bullets or pummeling your face unrecognizable!”

“Sweet offer,” Artemis calls back, “But I think we’ll pass.”

“Your funeral,” Tuppence says. “But when we capture you, don’t think we’ll be handing you over to the cops. You fucked with the wrong security force.”

“Tuppence,” Tommy’s voice joins the fray, sounding gruff and annoyed. “Stop trying to banter with them, and just kill ‘em.”

“Promises, promises,” Artemis mutters under her breath. She turns to Conner. “You take the big guy. I’ll take Little Miss Sunshine?”

Conner nods.

He signals once for Artemis to wait, then snakes around the edge of the corridor. There’s a series of exchanges after that, as Conner and Artemis work out their strategy by shorthand gestures. Eventually while the room fills up with two or three more guards, and the Terror Twins start sweeping across the hallway with their guns aimed high, Conner and Artemis figure out their attack plan. He takes low ground, and Artemis lodges herself up between the support beams on the ceiling, holding herself rigid as the guards turn the corner and pass below, unaware. Her muscles strain under the pressure, and she’s always been in good shape, but there’s only so long she can contort herself into such a position before her arms and legs give out. There are a few moments of silence, and just after Tommy gives the order to spread out further into the interconnecting corridors, she hears Conner attack.

By the time she drops to the floor, a burst of gunfire breaks out. Artemis bobs and weaves, coming back up to smash a flat heel against one guard’s nose. She disarms him and swings back around to slam an elbow to his face. She moves onto the next guy, who reacts a second too late and suffers for it when she executes a roundhouse that knocks him clean to the floor.

Across from her, Conner is engaged in a fight with Tommy Terrance, throwing a punch hard enough that something goes audibly  _crack_  in the air.

She turns, and Tuppence Terrance is grinning at her. “My, aren’t you a pretty one?”

Artemis attacks immediately. Darting across, she jabs an undercut at Tuppance’s side and twists her arm. Tuppance’s gun goes off, but the aim is towards the side and the two vie for control. The gun goes off again.

“Hey,” both Tommy and Conner shout. “Watch where you’re pointing that thing!” Tommy yells at his sister.

Artemis slams an elbow back into Tuppance’s face, but she twists, the gun drops to the floor, and then it’s a brutal fight after that. The women fling themselves at each other, and Tuppance scores the first hit that draws blood – a right hook that catches Artemis by the face and makes her right cheek go numb. She rebounds by buckling Tuppance’s leg at the knee.

Across from them, in juxtaposition, Artemis has just enough time between hits to snatch a look at Conner and Tommy. They’re trading blows that should knock any man clean out. But they’re both taking hits and they’re both getting up for more.

It’s been a while since Artemis has been in a fight like this, and it’s dirty. Tuppance isn’t above pulling at Artemis’ long upswept ponytail, and something about that makes Artemis flinch because,  _hello, catfight cliché, much?_  But it works because Artemis loses the upper hand in the fight because of it. It’s a messy sort of brawl, with swift fists and agile feet, and Tuppance pulls out an army knife from her boot, swishing it through the air so that opens with a flourish.

“ _Argh,_ ” Conner screams, and Artemis whirls to see him go down. The distraction proves disastrous, because Tuppance uses that, and the next thing Artemis knows, she’s flat on her back with the sharp blade at her throat. “Who do you work for?” Tuppance demands. “’Cause it’s gotta be an idiot to go after Vandal Savage’s stuff.”

“I take offense to that,” Dick announces, suddenly, from behind. He has Tommy Terrance in a headlock. Conner is wheezing on the ground, a bloody cut above his eye. “Let her go,” Dick warns Tuppance. “Or your brother’s going to have a really, _really_  bad day.”

Tuppance glares, lips pressed into a thin angry line. Then she drops her hand and steps back, defeated. Artemis rises on her elbow a little, one hand pressed against her neck to come back with flecks of blood on her fingertips. The puncture mark is small, though. Nothing to worry about.

“Thanks,” she says to Dick.

“Don’t mention—” he starts to say, but Tuppance flings her knife across at Dick’s head.

Dick dives, throwing a smoke-bomb towards the ground. Smoke fills the room. She can hear both Tommy and Tuppance coughing, but by the time the air clears, Artemis, Dick and Conner are long gone.

* * *

“Work faster,” Dick insists, while she types away at Savage’s computer.

“Hey, you wanna use Oracle’s program to hack into his computer, be my guest.”

“It’s inserting a pin drive and typing simple commands,” Dick replies, wryly. “I’m just saying, type _faster_. We can’t stay here long.”

“What part of us getting our asses kicked back there did you think I didn’t understand?” she growls back.

Behind them, Conner stands at watch at the door. The cut above his eye has bled all over him, making him look like something took great efforts to bash in his skull. He insists it’s nothing. Artemis doesn’t push him on it, because he also looks _angry_. She can tell just by the way he holds his shoulders stiffly. She wouldn’t want to be the next guy that challenged Conner. He tends to lick his wounds by picking an uglier fight to win, and she just wants out of the facility now. It’s lucky they got away from the Terror Twins, and she’s not looking for a second round just yet.

“Two guards are coming up,” Conner announces, suddenly.

“Shit,” Artemis says, “I still need another minute.”

Dick makes a snap decision. “I’ll finish running the program. You head out with Suberboy. Try to be loud in your escape and buy me some time. I’ll meet up with you at the second rendezvous point.”

“We’re not leaving you here alone,” Conner insists.

“I’ll be fine,” Dick answers back. “Just get Tigress out of here, safely. I’ll never hear the end of it from KF if something happens to her.”

“Hey,” Artemis protests, insulted. “I’m standing right here. No need to talk about me in third person. And I can take care of myself just fine!”

Dick turns his eyes on her. “Go! That’s an  _order_!”

She’s going to have words with him after this is all over.

Gnashing her teeth, she grabs her gear and books it out of the room with Conner. Stupid, idiot  _boys._  Conner takes out the pair of guards coming up the staircase without even breaking his stride. And because Dick told them to be loud, Artemis takes out some of her frustration by grabbing a gun and assassinating a nice little renaissance painting that must’ve set Savage back a few grand. The noise draws the attention of others, and Conner and Artemis lead the chase back up to the rooftop, away from Dick.

The exit strategy is similar to the one they used to get in. Except this time Artemis aims her grappling hook at the far wall of the building down below, on the south side. She can see Wally’s car nearby, waiting idly across the street. While she releases the rope, Conner secures the rooftop door by jamming a steel pipe across the handles so that no one can get through. It won’t hold for long, though.

Conner grabs the line, and holds it out to her. “Ladies, first.”

“Screw that,” Artemis says, still annoyed with Dick’s insinuation. “You go first.”

“Arte—”

“Don’t,” she cuts in, warning. “Just go first.”

They don’t have time to argue. Conner grits his teeth, but even for a guy that never backs down from a fight, he must sense the futility of this one. He grips the harness, and runs down the line. Artemis looks back at the door just in time to see bullets bite through; she can hear Tuppance screaming at her men to set explosives to blow open the door.

“ _Perfect,_ ” Artemis mutters to herself, sarcastically.

She turns to see Wally standing outside his car. She can see him help Conner to his feet when he hits the pavement roughly, and then Wally turns his gaze back towards the rooftops. Even from this distance, she can read his impatience. She waves once, thinking, _always in a hurry, aren't you, babe?_ , then hooks her harness onto the rope. She takes the leap off the rooftop just in time for the door to explode out, and she’s halfway down the line when she looks back up and sees Tuppance aiming a gun at her. Artemis has a second to realize, amidst the adrenaline and the chaos, despite the rushing wind and the growing distance between both women, that the look on Tuppance’s face is one of absolute hatred and glee.

A shot rings out and then next thing Artemis Crock knows, she’s  _falling._

“Artemis!” she hears Wally scream in horror.

* * *

 


	10. Chapter 10

  
_“Barbara!” she hears Dick scream in horror._

_The rope is going to break. That’s all she can think as her grip on Jason’s hand slackens. Beneath her, down forty feet, the factory fire rages with an inferno that could swallow her up whole. She can see the panic in Jason’s eyes, the desperate grip between them slipping inch by inch._

_“Stay with me, Babs,” Jason breathes, straining. “Dick is going to get to us. Just give him time. We’ll get through this.”_

_She dares glancing sideways, and she can’t even make out where Dick is anymore. She knows he’s desperately trying to reach them, but the entire factory is a wasteland of fire and wreckage, and one false step on an unsupported beam could bring the entire structure down._

_Jason could survive, if he let go. It’s a thought that flitters through her at the speed of lightning, and she can tell Jason reads her like an open book._

_“You go,” Jason breathes out, stubbornly, eyes blazing, “we both go.”_

_Her face clears of fear. “You… you can make it, Jason. Just… just let go—”_

_She never finishes. The rope breaks, and Barbara plummets, taking Jason with her. They splinter apart as they fall. While Jason plummets down below into the inferno, Barbara crashes onto a steel catwalk twenty feet below. Her back slams onto the handrail._

_Her body breaks on impact._

* * *

Dick sees the flaming wreckage of the east grove trees as he drops out through the third-story window and lands gracefully on his feet. It’s the gunshots towards the west side that attract his attention, though. He turns, hesitating briefly, before there’s a distant call of “Artemis!” in the air; Wally, shouting. Dick never even makes the conscious decision. He’s just moving. Wally’s shout sends shockwaves through him, and by the time Dick has made it to the open pavilion near the front gates, the sight that greets him stops him dead in his tracks.

Guards are everywhere. Artemis is lying on the ground, unmoving. She's clearly fallen from the zipline dangling over her head. Based on the height, he judges she fell at least twenty to thirty feet. It’s the fact that she’s unmoving that makes Dick freeze up. To his right, Tuppance calls out for her guards to surround her. Dick remains hidden behind the shrubbery, and he only has a few seconds to think, to strategize. 

Gunfire breaks out before he can, startling Dick. He ducks for cover, and it takes him a second to realize someone was shooting  _at_  the guards, rather than them shooting at Dick.

“Another intruder!” a guard calls. “Southwest wing!”

A brief wave of confusion washes over him, because no one on his team carries guns –  _no one_  – and none of them approached the southwest wing. It’s a short-lived bewilderment because he needs to take advantage of the distraction. Wally must be thinking the same thing, because a second later, his pristine and insanely expensive GTO comes crashing through the side linked fence. It swerves, coming to a skidding halt between Artemis’ prone body and Tuppance’s men. Within seconds, Conner jumps out and has dragged Artemis into the passenger seat. Then Wally’s gunning the engines.

They’re gone in four seconds flat, the souped-up car leaving dust in the wind before the security teams even have a clear look at what crashed through the gates.

“Way to stay whelmed,” Dick mutters under his breath, approving.

Then he turns around and comes face-to-face with Tommy Terrance. There's a gun pointed at Dick's chest, dead-center. There’s a long beat of stillness, when Dick is almost positive this day is going to end as abruptly as it is badly. Then the blaring lights and the familiar siren noise of the Metropolis cops alerts them to company. Tommy’s Cro-Magnon face darkens, but he trades some sort of look with his sister across the expanse of twenty feet, seeking approval. It’s apparently his sister that measures the headache of explaining a murder to the cops or letting them handle it, and finally she shakes her head, annoyed. Tuppance strides forward, swiftly patting him down before discovering the small pin-drive with the _Incendiary_ file on it. Dick bites back a few choice curse words when she palms the device, and then shrugs.

“I don’t know who you are,” she tells him, “but you picked the wrong enemy. Savage will make you suffer for the rest of your life for this.”

Tommy sighs heavily, turning back to Dick. “Still, it’s your lucky day, asshole. Be thankful you’ve  _got_  the rest of your life.”

He slams the butt-end of his gun into Dick’s face just as the police come through the gates. Even as he goes limp, vision blurring and fighting unconsciousness, Dick realizes he never thought he’d be so relieved to be caught by the police in his entire life.

As he passes out, he thinks:  _all things considered, it could have been worse._

* * *

“Is she breathing?” Wally asks, panicked. “Where was she shot? Why isn’t she awake?”

“Hold on,” Conner says, desperately, searching Artemis. When he comes back with blood on his hands, Wally nearly crashes the car into a streetlamp. All he can think is,  _this is it. This is how it all ends, isn’t it?_  But then Conner says, “It’s a graze.”

“What?”

“The gunshot,” he clarifies, breathless. “It’s a graze. Barely even looks like a gunshot.”

“Anything else?”

Conner flinches. “She hit the back of her head.”

The words are damning. A concussion, fractured skull – or worse. The fall could’ve been fatal, but she’d been down the rope-line enough that she’d managed to roll when she hit the ground. “Oracle,” Conner calls over his earpiece. “We need assistance.”

Behind them, Wally’s aware the cops are giving chase. He can see the strobe lights and the sirens about a block or two away, but he’s puts his foot to the floor and jams hard on the accelerator. The commercial streets race by in a blur.

_“What do you need?”_  Barbara asks.

“A hospital,” Wally says.

“They have to report the gunshot,” Conner tells him.

“I don’t care!” Wally snarls. “She needs a doctor!”

_“Wait, wait,”_  Barbara’s voice comes on, trying to calm him.  _“Relax, Wally. Just make it out of there. I’ll—- I’ll see what I can do.”_

Wally grips the steering wheel and swerves. He rockets the car over a pair of railroad tracks and turns onto an industrial neighborhood that runs along the piers. The cop cars behind him can’t keep up, but a few more are coming at him from up ahead. Wally has to get his head in the game. This is what he  _does_. This is where he’s usually in his best element. Give him a car and a chase, and there’s no one better than Wally West. No one. But he can’t keep his eyes from drifting to take in Artemis’ slumped form, and his concentration is shot to hell.

_If something happens to her—_

“Look out!”

Wally barely manages to veer away from crashing into a big rig. He shifts gear and plows ahead, because he has no choice but to barrel into oncoming traffic, so why not do it at full speed? The blares of angry horns chase him down the street. He jumps the curb and rides the hard shoulder. Conner is screaming at him that there are six cop cars behind them. Wally can only see four through his rearview mirror. It doesn’t matter; the only thing that matters is getting clear so they can get Artemis help.

The goal gives him focus.

When he turns the corner, he leaves two cars in a fender-bender when he forces them to collide. One cop car tries to push him to the curb, but Wally waits until the cop is right up alongside the GTO before he slams the brakes. The cop car jets ahead, unable to stop itself, and slams into a wall, the airbag ejecting on impact. Wally whiteknuckles the steering wheel. He whips across Paulo Ave and onto a section of the city where the nightlife includes runaways and teenaged misfits partying around a bonfire.

“We need to ditch the cops, and then ditch this car,” Conner says.

The cops start shooting at the GTO, and a thought occurs to Wally, “You see Dick get out?”

Conner trades a dark look with him. “No. I think the cops got him. Either that, or the Terror Twins.”

Wally’s nostrils flare out as he expels a harsh exhale. “Oracle, you hear that?” This entire mission went to shit in a blink of an eye. “Oracle?”

_“I got it,”_  Barbara comes on, harried, and she sounds like she’s typing ten thousand words a minute; he can even hear it over the earpiece.  _“I’m sending M’gann and Zatanna to recover Dick. Just take care of Artemis. M’gann says she knows someone at a hospital. An administrator at South Metro Hospital? Get there, and ask for Dr. Logan—La’gaan. Sorry. Dr. _La’gaan._  Tell him M’gann sent you.”_

“Not that asshole,” Conner grumbles under his breath. Then catches the desperation on Wally’s face, and backtracks immediately, “Uh, no, he’s fine. He’ll help. I just don’t… like him much.”

Normally, Wally would ask for details but he just doesn’t care in that moment. 

“Wait, wait,” Conner says, looking around at the scenery flashing by. “We can’t be here.”

“What?”

“You remember Kaldur’s cover story for getting Savage out of the office building tonight? He made up some story about a new factory location that Black Manta wanted Savage to check out. I think it’s around here somewhere. We can’t be here. They might be nearby.”

Wally silently curses, but Conner is right. The last thing he needs is to run into Savage and his men right now, or bring the cops down on Kaldur. There’s a green billboard nearby that announces the highway entrance. His fingers flex over the steering wheel once, then twice, before he reaches a reckless decision. He swerves the car to the onramp, cutting off a stream of cars and ignoring a blare of horns. A car chase on the highway. It’s dangerous and unpredictable, and he could get all of them killed. It’s also the best way to put pavement between him and the cop cars.

It’s a good plan because it’s another five-minute chase before he loses them entirely on I-95. He takes a familiar exit and drives towards the ghetto shambles on the east side of the city. He brings them to a line of abandoned and foreclosed houses. They ditch the Ferrari like it's a worthless piece of junk. It’ll be stolen or stripped for parts before sunrise, guaranteed. 

They boost another car in the neighboring block, and Wally carries Artemis towards it. She’s still out cold and the graze on her forearm looks strangely like a bloody knife-cut more than a gunshot wound. It spreads a bloody mess all over him. His hands are shaking as he sets her down on the backseat of the new ride. He thought he’d outgrown that adrenaline side effect years ago, but the idea of Artemis dying has him feeling as novel as a rookie on his first heist. Wally takes the city streets quickly, finally pulling the car to a screeching halt outside South Metro Hospital. Conner starts shouting for some medical attention immediately, especially La’gaan. 

Wally swings around the front of the car and pulls Artemis back out of the passenger seat, carrying her up to the front. “What happened?” a nurse asks him, rushing out the double doors.

“A car accident,” Conner answers, before Wally even opens his mouth. “She hit her head.”

They take her from Wally’s arms, loading her onto a gurney, and it’s like things are moving too fast and too slow at the same time. Conner has to hold Wally back when the staff wheel her into the ER. He sees a flock of medical personnel swarm around her, and all he does is stand there, limply, arms soiled with her blood and still shaking. 

* * *

The coffee is bitter, the night is late, and Mal Duncan is entirely too tired for this shit. 

He collapses onto his stiff desk chair at the Metro PD department, utterly exhausted. When the secretary makes the last sweep of the day, she leaves his mail on the edge of the desk he shares with his partner. It’s a shitty little space barely big enough for one person. No one ever gets paid well in money or prestige for this type of work, but Mal didn’t become a cop for either. It means something to him to have a badge. But even after three years of being a detective, he still isn’t used to the amount of paperwork it entails. Forget gunshots or stabbings. If he dies on the job, the paperwork will legitimately be the cause of his death. He’s calling it now.

People call him a feigned cynic, though. They tell him he's the type of guy that was born to be a cop. He takes it as a compliment, even if he doesn't know why people say that. His decision to become a cop had never been influenced by any personal tragedy or even a reason that he could well formulate into words. He’d been good at football in high school, unsurprising given his stature. He hadn’t been good enough to do anything about it after graduating, though. Joining the force had just been a natural step after that, so obvious that he can’t even pinpoint when he’d made the decision. He likes putting bad guys behind bars. He likes the sense of accomplishment that comes from an honest day’s work. He likes that people look to him for protection. He’s not the smartest guy on the force, but he works hard and he’s got good instincts. That matters. Some days, that’s enough. Then there are the days where people either die or the bad guys get away or go unpunished. On those days, Mal goes through a round of self-flagellation because only an  _idiot_ would sign themselves up for this type of work willingly.

He sorts through the mail tiredly, barely paying attention to the envelopes. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep but he must doze off at some point because his partner bursts in through the side doors, as exuberate and ready to work as always, throwing a folder at him and telling him to wake up. He’s disoriented, but this is hardly the first time that’s happened to him today; he’s been winding down a double-shift on the Robbery-Homicide Unit. 

Even though his partner, Karen Beecher, has been working alongside him the entire time, she’s a machine and a workaholic, and he’s just  _grumpy._

“Babe,” he says, “let the next guy take the case. Our shift is almost up.”

Karen lifts an eyebrow. “Cut it with the  _babe,_ ” she chides, quietly. But they’re the worst kept secret in the entire precinct, and she’s the only one that refuses to accept it. “We’re still on the clock for another hour, Mal. Now, c’mon, we’ve got work to do.”

As all the other times this has happened, Mal isn’t given much time to get ready. He quickly throws on his jacket, shoves a day old donut into his mouth, and grabs the coffee and file in a rush to catch up with his partner. Six years knowing her, three years working side-by-side as partners, and he still can’t keep up with her tiny legs. How she gets so much energy, he’ll never know. He just knows it’s one of the many, many attributes he admires about her – though the attribute he’s currently admiring as he follows her into the hallway is something else entirely.

“Stop it,” she chides, aiming a lifted eyebrow back at him. “I can  _feel_  you checking out my ass.”

He grins, unashamed. “Don’t know what you’re taking about, Karen.”

She rolls her eyes. “The robbery had several perpetrators,” she says, pointedly, always business. “We have one of them in custody, already.”

He opens the file, scanning quickly. “How bad?”

“No one was seriously injured, but one security guard was shot in the arm and there was a car chase through twelve blocks of the downtown industrial neighborhood. Two car accidents in that, and one cop came out of it with a bad case of whiplash. They say the perps were driving a GTO Ferrari. Lost it somewhere on the highway, believe it or not. And one of them might be injured according to several eyewitnesses.”

“Already notified the hospitals?”

Karen flashes him an amused look. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

In the half a decade he has known Karen, she has always been professional and dignified, folding into his life as if she had always been there, her yin to his yang. It really had been a coincidence when he first met her. She lived in the apartment across from his for nearly two weeks before Mal finally recognized her from one of the freshmen classes at his police academy. He got up the nerve to ask her out shortly thereafter, and even if both of them had recognized the potential problems that lay in store for them, when they started dating, he’d immediately congratulated himself on making one of the best decisions of his life. They’d been together on and off for nearly two years after that, before officially breaking up one summer because work kept getting in the way. 

Then a year after that, he’d been assigned as her partner in the Robbery-Homicide Division. The rest, he liked to put it, was almost inevitable. They started sleeping together, at first just a one-night stand. Then it became a pattern. They’re finally back to the point where it’s obvious they’re dating as seriously as ever. Karen doesn’t like to talk about it, especially at work (god help him if he brings it up where a colleague might overhear), but it’s been progressing to the point where Mal eyes rings in the jewelry store windows he passes by on his way home from work. 

He loves Karen. She loves him. Only problem is, he’s not sure if she loves her work just a little bit  _more_. Their boss is a good guy who looks the other way regarding fraternization regs, because Mal and Karen are one of the best teams in the division with the highest arrest rates. But a marriage is something official, and he knows it’d officially spell doom for their partnership. One or both of them might even need to be transferred out of the division.

Mal scrubs a hand over his face and takes another bitter sip of his coffee. He shakes his head and tries to put those thoughts to rest, refocusing on the robbery case before him. At first, it looks like nothing they haven’t dealt with a thousand and one times before. All Mal and Karen have to do is get the perp they caught to rat out the rest of his team; it’s remarkably easy if they play it right. 

Most criminals are self-serving grunts, when it comes right down to it. 

“We get an ID yet?”

Karen frowns. “For some reason the computer system seems to be down. We haven’t ID’ed him yet, but they’re already booked and fingerprinted him under John Doe.”

Mal nods. He makes it to the interrogation room just as the blue uniforms are bringing in the perp. Mal assesses the guy. Good build. Clearly works out. A pretty boy, even. Dark hair, blue eyes, and when he looks up at Mal, he doesn’t flinch or look away from the scrutinizing assessment. And Mal knows he’s a big guy, usually intimidating to most. The guy doesn’t look worn thin; he’s not sitting in a heap like most men who get brought into this room in handcuffs. Instead, he’s at ease and alert like the chains are an inconsequential detail. 

“Hi,” Mal begins, amiably enough. “My name’s Mal Duncan, and this here is my partner, Karen Beecher. And you are?”

“Just passing through.”

_Cute._  “C’mon, gotta call you something, don’t I?”

The guy shrugs a little. “I believe you guys booked me as John?”

“John what?” Karen asks, dryly.

“You tell me,” the guy answers.

This was going to be a long night. 

Karen sighs. Mal lets her take the lead on this. She smiles at “John” as she joins him at the table, dropping her folder with a thud before sinking down into her chair. “All right. You’re in a bit of some trouble, you know that? One charge aggravated assault, one charge conspiracy to commit armed robbery. There’s a security guard in the hospital for a gunshot wound and a cop with a broken collarbone in that chase your accomplices forced. Public destruction and endangerment, not to mention you’ve come precariously close to being charged with Felony Murder. You could’ve gotten Life for that alone,  _John_. You’re lucky no one came out seriously injured. Though, there are reports that one of your friends might have suffered fatal injuries?” John flinches, and Karen continues, astutely, “You should know cops are canvasing all the local hospitals. We’ll keep you apprised about that.”

A pinched expression of worry flashes across John’s face, but he turns his head away, jaw clenching. “We weren’t carrying any guns,” he informs, flatly. “That guard must have been shot by his own men.”

Karen smiles. “Nice try, but the bullet doesn’t match the caliber of any of the weapons that the guards were carrying. You’re not getting out of the armed robbery charges. Besides, you used explosives to set a bunch of trees on fire. That automatically qualifies you for aggravated indictments.”

“We didn’t use guns,” John counters, flippantly. “I never denied the bomb.”

Karen pauses, then shakes her head. “Why deny the one and not the other?”

“Because it’s the truth.”

“Look,” Mal says, settling his elbows on the table, leaning forward with a frown. “You’re looking at a few years of jail time, at least five to ten. That’s assuming you don’t have any priors.”

“Don’t mean to sound traught,” he answers back, “but it’s not the jail time I’m worried about.”

“Traught?” Karen blinks in confusion.

John ignores the question. “How safe am I in this place?”

Mal sits back, surprised. “You think you need protective custody?”

John raises an eyebrow. “You don’t know much about Vandal Savage, do you?”

“The guy you tried to rob?” Karen answers, and opens her folder. “Diplomat. Rich, and well respected. What else do I need to know?”

There’s a lengthy pause. John is clearly going for aloof, and though he’s talking, he’s not telling them anything real. It’s a smart tactic, and one that a surprisingly few number of criminals ever take advantage of. They’re always mouthing off, saying more than they need to, always angry or defensive. Mal knows how to goad them into that. A lot of them dig their own graves that way. John seems smarter than that, but already Mal can see the small flick of worry in his rigid shoulders, the averted gaze, the calm that belies his anxiety. 

_Exploit the injured accomplice,_  Mal realizes; whoever that person is, she’s important to this guy. John seems like a seasoned pro, but everyone has a weakness.

“C’mon,” Mal goads. “You’re in a bad place, John. One of your own is probably dying, and you’re going to spend a few years in jail. I’ll make you a deal. Give up your friends, and I’ll make sure the courts go lenient on you. Shave off a few years.”

John tenses. “You think I’m going to sell out my friends?”

“Bad guys like you usually do.”

“I’m not the bad guy.”

“You’re the one in the cuffs, buddy,” Mal counters. “You went after a peaceful diplomat. You had to know it would end badly.”

Apparently Mal struck a nerve. “Ever wonder why a guy like that,” John hisses, intensely, “such a  _peaceful_  diplomat, has a security detail with militant special forces training?”

“To deal with men like you?” Karen offers, lightly. 

“They’ve been implicated in four different murders in the last six years,” John counters. “Implicated, but never charged.”

Karen sits back. “So, you’re saying Savage is a bad man?”

“Worse than you can imagine.”

“And what?” Mal laughs. “You’re Robin Hood? I don’t think prison is going to be a good place to be for a Robin Hood that looks like you.”

“Tell me about it,” John mutters under his breath.

It has enough wryness in it that Mal realizes he’s dealing with a guy that’s already been through the joint once before. He trades a look with Karen, and he knows she’s thinking the same thing. It’s annoying that the computer system is down, because they need an ID on this guy beyond a fictitious first name.

“You know,” John says, chains rattling a little as he settled his elbows on the table, mirroring Mal. “I used to have this little brother. His name was – well, I won’t tell you what we used to call him, but he was this little punk-ass seventeen-year-old boy. He was always angry at the world. There was never a big enough challenge for him. But he was a good kid, y’know? He had a good heart, and he would always do the right thing, even if he had to lie about it so that no one would know what a big softie he really was. He died trying to save my girlfriend.”

Mal isn’t sure where he’s going with this. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Savage is responsible for that,” John continues, tersely. “For killing a seventeen-year old boy who willingly burned to death rather than letting a woman die. You have no idea what Savage is capable of, or what I’m trying to do. I don’t expect you to believe me. Hell, if I were in your shoes, I’d think this was a pile of lies. A crackpot off his meds. But if you ever decide to dig a little deeper at Savage, you’ll see I’m right. I’m not the bad guy, Detectives. And Savage isn’t the victim. He’s—”

“—the Sheriff of Nottingham?” Mal cuts in, wryly.

John’s features never change, at least not overtly, but in the wake of Mal’s teasing remark, he goes blank-faced. He’s clearly a man with a beef and years of resentment. Maybe even a paranoid conspiracist. 

But despite himself, for a beat Mal wonders if his story holds any water. 

There’s a knock at the door. “Detectives,” one of the blue uniforms says, “There’s two FBI agents in the hallway. They’re here for the perp.”

“FBI?” Karen questions, incredulous. “This isn’t their jurisdiction.”

“They disagree,” the uniform says.

Mal and Karen rise without a word, and from the look on John’s face, he doesn’t particularly seem surprised by the development. He walks out with Karen to find two female FBI agents in the corridor, both dressed sharply in dark suits, one in comfortable, practical shoes (a redhead) and the other six-inch heels (a brunette). 

“Detective Beecher and Duncan?” the redhead greets, in a heavy Jersey accent. They both flash their badges quickly. “I’m Agent Mary Johnson, and this is my partner, Agent Zee Johnson. No relation.”

“Both your last names are Johnson?”

The brunette rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe the shit we get for that.”

“I hear you have a man in custody?” the redhead says, “We suspect we know who he is. Can we get a chance to speak to him?”

Karen and Mal exchange a glance, then Karen reluctantly nods. She leads the group back into the interrogation room where they find John seated quietly behind the table. He looks up at the arrival, and flashes a smile. “Hello, ladies. Still chasing me after all these years?

The redhead glares. “That’s him, all right. John Blake. A.T.F. and the F.B.I. have been after him for quite a while.”

“You mean his name is really John?” Mal asks, incredulous.

The redhead nods. “Let me venture a guess. He tried robbery? Explosives were used. A simple G4 mainliner, double-coil, backwound, quick fuse with a drag under 20 feet?”

Karen and Mal exchange another confused look. “Preliminary reports are still coming in, but that sounds about right. We’re charging him with aggravated assault and armed robbery.”

“Yes, well,” the brunette continues, then clears her throat. “That’s our man. Tell me something else. Have you checked him for booby traps on his person? I mean _really_  checked, not just for weapons, but like a full body cavity—”

The redhead cuts in quickly, “That won’t be necessary, Agent Johnson,” while John glares at the brunette with narrowed eyes. “We’ll check him out ourselves back at the bureau.”

“Hey, now,” Mal cuts in, annoyed. “You’re taking him?”

“Of course we are,” the redhead answers, straightening to hand Karen some paperwork. “Not only have we been looking for Blake for years, but he’s a fanatic that’s attacking a diplomat. That’s clearly FBI jurisdiction.”

Mal frowns while Karen looks over the paperwork briefly. “Looks legit,” Karen admits, sounding just as disgruntled as he feels. “But how did you even know we had him? The computers are all down.”

“That’s a question you need to ask your IT department,” the redhead answers. “Now, if we can do this quickly. It’s already late in the night, and I’d like the transfer to happen before sunrise.”

Mal gestures for the ladies to leave the room first. While they file out, he flashes another look back at John. There’s something fishy about all of this. He can’t put a finger on it, but it’s simple instinct. The transfer of custody takes no more than twenty minutes before he’s watching John Blake being loaded into the back of a dark sedan. Both Agent Johnsons wave at Mal and climb into the car, and Mal should have been happy, because it’s one less headache for him to deal with, one less case to put to rest before his shift is over. 

Instead, he stares after the car as it drives away, frowning.

“Karen,” he calls. “Let me look at that Blake file again? I wanna see what the FBI had on him.”

* * *

“A full body cavity search?” Dick asks, incredulous, glaring at Zatanna.

Upfront, both Zatanna and M’gann break down into giggles. “I’m sorry,” Zatanna gasps, looking like she can barely breathe through the laughter. “It was too good of an opportunity to pass up. It’s not like I get that many chances to impersonate an FBI agent!”

“You did wonderful,” M’gann informs, beaming. “I told you that you could do it. The first time is always hard, but you kept it interesting.”

“Thanks, you gave me some great tips—”

“That’s really nice,” Dick cuts in, dryly. “Now someone mind getting me out of these cuffs?”

Zatanna looks back, a mischievous look in her eyes. He doesn’t want to know what she’s thinking, because as an ex-boyfriend, there’s only so many ways she should still be able to torture him with that look. In the driver’s seat, M’gann laughs and reaches back to hand him the keys. He could have picked the lock with nothing more than a hairpin, but it’s nice when he doesn’t have to work at it so much.

“Barbara wants to talk to you,” Zatanna informs, handing him back an earpiece.

“This looks like it’s mine?” Dick says, holding up the bud. They were all color-coded, and Dick's was always blue.

“It is yours,” Zatanna informs. “I stole it from the evidence bag.”

Dick raises an eyebrow at her, impressed.

“What?” Zatanna says, smirking. “I’m a magician, Dick. I know how to pickpocket and steal probably as good as you.”

He doesn’t doubt that. He puts the earpiece back in, and the first thing he hears is Barbara’s voice saying,  _“You are a complete **idiot.**_ ”

“I’m fine, Babs. Thanks for asking.”

_“How was prison this time?”_

“Oh, you know, just like old times. Zatanna even tried to have me strip searched, just for good measure.”

_“I’ve always loved the way Zatanna’s mind works,”_  Barbara says, cheerfully, and it’s a fact: one day Dick’s fate would certainly end at the hands of one of his ex-girlfriends. It’s a toss-up between which one, or if all of them would be involved equally.  _“Anyway, Boy Genius, you’re lucky I was able to hack into the Metro PD database. Your fingerprints and information have been completely deleted. The file I created on your alias, John R. Blake, is good enough as long as no one too smart goes digging too deeply. I’ve already ordered any evidence to be destroyed and the lab techs will think it’s a mix up. But, god, Dick. That was too close.”_

“This is why we had backup plans,” Dick counters. “M’gann and Zatanna both impersonated the FBI perfectly. But did you have to name them both Johnson?”

“That was a mix up,” Zatanna admits up front, sheepishly. “I grabbed the wrong badge. By the time I realized it, we were halfway to the precinct.”

Dick sighs, then asks Barbara, “How’s Artemis?”

_“It’s too soon to say, but Dick, I’m worried. She’s at South Metro Hospital. You need to get over there ASAP.”_

“The cops are canvasing the hospitals,” Dick informs.

“Don’t worry about that,” M’gann says, from upfront. “One of my ex-boyfriends is a doctor that works as the hospital administrator. He’ll cover for us.”

_“You guys still need to book it there,”_  Barbara insists. 

“Barbara,” he says, hesitantly, “one more question. Did you notice… were any of us using guns at any point in the operation?”

There’s a long pause on the other end, and even both M’gann and Zatanna are giving him looks of surprise. 

_“No, of course not. You know none of us like guns.”_

Dick frowns. It’s one thing he’s always liked about his friends. The one thing everyone always agrees upon. For him, it’s a conditioned moral standpoint. Bruce always hated guns, and so Dick had never really been allowed near them as an adolescent. When he’d grown up enough, he realized that the hatred for guns had become ingrained. 

_“Anyway,”_  Barbara’s voice comes back on, sounding somber,  _“I’ll join you guys at the hospital in a few hours. There’s just a few more things I need to tidy up before I can get away from my computers. And I need to make some phone calls. I think Wally and Artemis could use some of their family support right now.”_

“All right, I’ll see you soon.”

_“Oh, and Dick? Keep an eye out on Wally. Conner is with him right now, and he… he isn’t in the best shape.”_

Dick closes his eyes, riding out the moment with sick desperation. “Just,” Dick says to Barbara, suddenly needing to see her in person for reasons he can’t even put into words, “come soon, Babs. Come as soon as you can.”

Barbara pauses. “I will. I just… have to wrap up a few things.”

“Okay,” he says, reluctantly. 

The rest of the car ride is spent in silence.

* * *

Barbara signs off, and then hangs her head a little. She feels suddenly exhausted, and she hates lying to Dick. Lying, or omitting the full truth – it’s the same difference.

“Did he suspect anything?”

She wheels herself around, staring at the tall dark figure standing near the foyer. “No, of course not.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

“Why are you here?” she demands. “Why now?”

“Because I’ve been following a trail of breadcrumbs, and it’s led right back here to Metropolis. I had to come here.”

“So it has nothing to do with Dick? I find that hard to believe. Not even you can be so callous. I don’t care what aura of indifference you project around the others. I know you better than that.” 

Bruce Wayne steps forward, and she gets a better look at him. In this light, he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Dark shadows circle his eyes. When he’d shown up at her hotel door an hour earlier (with Alfred and the dubious Selina Kyle in step behind him, no less) it had thrown Barbara. But there’s something haunting about his presence now that’s even more off-putting. He regards her with this solemn sort of look – deep, troublesome, almost piercing. She’s reminded of the fact that this man is possibly the best con artist on the planet, and he never projects what he doesn’t want other people to see. But for once, there seems to be no walls or illusions surrounding him. He’s no longer a young, spry man, but the way he looks now, he’s aged a decade in the three months since she’d last seen him. 

She wonders what could possibly make Bruce Wayne look so haggard. 

“Bruce,” she says worriedly, wheeling forward. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I need you to look into something for me, Barbara,” Bruce says. “And I need you to keep it a secret from Dick.”

* * *

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so one of these scenes may totally be inspired by [this comic strip](http://irony-rocks.tumblr.com/post/41711502231/jasontheredhood-this-scene-made-me-cry). It was too awesome for words, I had to do it.

Dick is impatient to get to the hospital, and he isn’t the only one. M’gann drives them passed the city limit sign shortly before sunrise with a blatant disregard to speed limits, and by some minor miracle they manage not to pass a cop the entire way. She pulls the car to a full stop on the first parking lot space available, and the trio emerges into the chilly pre-dawn air. Zatanna checks in at the front desk, and by the time they’ve found the right section of the hospital, they arrive to find a crowded waiting room. Conner is standing rigidly in front of Artemis’ room with arms folded over his chest; Raquel is seated at the corner, and Tim, Steph and Cassie are all huddled in the opposite corner, for once disturbingly silent for a normally rambunctious lot. There’s no sight of Wally anywhere, not even when Dick glances through the room’s blinds to spy Artemis slumbering in her room, surrounded by a sea of medical equipment.

“I told Wally to get some air,” Conner informs, to Dick’s unasked question. “He was going a little stir-crazy here. Almost took the head off some nurse that refused to give him information because he’s not her _official_ family.”

Dick winces, because that couldn’t have been a pretty scene. “How is she?”

“The docs haven’t told us much yet,” Conner answers.

“Like I told your friend, Wally,” another voice jumps in. “That’s because there’s not much to say.” The group whirls around to find a tall, lean doctor standing at the edge of the hallway. M’gann takes one look at him and squeals, rushing to embrace him in a big hug. Dick doesn’t miss the way Conner’s face tightens. “Hello, Angelfish.”

_Angelfish?_

M’gann beams. “It’s been forever, La’gaan. Thank god you’re here to help.”

Conner cuts in, tightly, “Where is the doctor?”

Raquel rises from her chair, which in her condition of being six months pregnant, takes a bit of a while. “He _is_ her doctor, isn’t he?”

La’gaan clears his throat, sheepishly. “Actually, this is one of those scenarios where it’s more appropriate to say I play one on TV.”

Realization dawns on Dick when he sees a flush grow on M’gann’s face. “You’re a grifter, just like M’gann.”

“Bullseye,” La’gaan says. “Always had a knack for adapting to my surroundings, just like Angelfish and her little brother. How is Garfield, anyway?”

“In school,” M’gann informs, primly. “I made him promise he’d finish undergrad at Harvard before he’d join me in any family ventures.”

Dick doesn’t mean to interrupt this warm reunion, but there are more pressing issues. “Is your cover here good?” he asks La’gaan, because if it isn’t, they’re all exposed. 

“Relax,” La’gaan says, self-assured with a grin. “I’ve been running this con on the hospital for months now, and no one suspects anything. I’ve been trying to get some sensitive information of some of the denizens of this hospital, the more indecently rich ones. Hospital administrator is a nice way to gain access to that information.”

“Look,” Zatanna says, looking like she’s losing patience. “You seem like a nice guy, but your con or your credentials are your business. I just want to know Artemis is in good hands.”

“She is,” La’gaan answers, turning somber. “See, I’ve already spoken with the doctors in charge of her. I’ve got the full 411. It’s basically too early to say anything too concrete. I tried to explain this to Wally, but I’m not sure he understood much. Poor guy seems pretty torn up – though might I suggest you guys keep him away from the nurses? He’s already pissed them off a bit and, well, there’s an old saying. Though they be tiny, they can be _mean._ ”

“La’gaan,” M’gann presses, gently.

“Right,” La’gaan straightens. “There’s cerebral hemorrhaging, which means in layman’s terms that there’s bleeding in her brain. It’s problematic because the docs don’t know the extent it’s compromised her system. We’re running a battery of tests, but the damage will only be clear depending on when and if she wakes up.”

_“If?”_ M’gann repeats, paling.

“I’m not going to lie, Angelfish. Your friend isn’t in a good situation. She took a massive blow to the head and suffered numerous injuries.” He quiets for a second, pulling M’gann and the others into a tighter cluster. “I’ve listed the cut on her arm as just another injury from the car accident, but I’ve seen enough gunshots in my time to recognize one when I see one. What exactly are you guys involved in?”

“It’s better you don’t know the details,” Conner informs, flatly.

La’gaan’s eyes flash in anger. “Hey, let’s not forget that I’m risking five months of leg-work here. If you tried to learn the obscene amounts of medical jargon that I’ve had to, your brain would explode. A little appreciation for the job I’m jeopardizing wouldn’t go amiss, y’know?”

“Cute,” Conner hisses, unamused. The two men stare at each other, and it feels almost by design that M’gann is caught standing between them. “There’s no need to risk your precious _con_ further by knowing anymore than you need to.”

“God, you haven’t changed at all, have you?” La’gaan says, fiercely. “Still think there’s an in-crowd and I’m not part of it? This isn’t high school, Conner.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking—”

“Enough!” M’gann cuts in, with finality. “My best friend is in a _coma_. I’m not going to stand here while you two engage in the same pissing contest that’s been going on for the last _decade_!”

“Man,” Raquel remarks, quietly, “and I thought my love-life was complicated.”

M’gann sighs. “When do they think Artemis is going to wake up, La’gaan?”

Chastened, both La’gaan and Conner drop their rigid attitudes. “We don’t know that,” La’gaan says, “She’ll wake up when her body lets her. But the longer it lasts, the more chances are that they’ll be some form of brain damage in the fallout. We can only wait and see. I’m sorry, babe. I wish there was better news.” 

Dick listens to the empty words that offer no comfort at all, feeling his stomach cave in. _A few hours, a day, and she’ll be awake._ Dick convinces himself of the line, because anything alternative to that is unthinkable. In the meantime, he might be able to figure out the troubling question-mark surrounding the bungle-up at Savage’s building. Plus, they’re nowhere near home safe in this environment; true, M’gann seems to trust this La’gaan character, and that’s good enough for Dick, even if it looks like there’s a whole awkward history between them and Conner. Dick won’t stick his nose into that, especially when he has greater concerns. There’s too many variables. What if one of the doctors gets a little too curious? He doesn’t even know what alias they have Artemis under. Dick always prefers to know the details of any plan before implementing them, but in this particular case they’re all flying by the seat of their pants.

But then again, where do plans get them? The first phase of their operation is a complete and utter failure. Not only did they fail to get the evidence against Vandal Savage, but Artemis got hurt. This was _never_ supposed to happen. No one should have gotten hurt. All this planning, all this set-up – and Dick knows if anything happens to her, it’ll be his own damn fault. 

He spends a few more minutes talking with La’gaan before Raquel pulls Dick aside and says, “You should check on Wally. Like, _five minutes ago_.”

The idea leaves a foul taste in his mouth because he isn’t looking forward to this. There’s no one else that should handle it, though. 

Dick sets about finding Wally, wandering through the halls and even venturing outside in the garden veranda area. The biting temperature and isolation quickly chase Dick back inside, and eventually he finds Wally in the lonely cafeteria still closed for the night. Wally just stands in front of a vending machine, vacantly, and Dick wonders how long he’s been like that. His shoulders are slumped, his gaze blank, and a bomb could probably go off and Wally would hardly notice.

“Wally,” he calls, softly.

Wally doesn’t react at first, until Dick calls out again and he blinks. Wally lifts his head slowly, and it’s like the movement dislodges his brain, because he looks over at Dick and his vision clears. Dick expects to see untethered emotions, but it still unsettling to see red-rimmed and puffy eyes on a man that Dick hasn’t seen cry since they were snot-faced kids. Wally takes a steadying breath. Then, before another word is even spoken, Wally slams his hand through the glass on the vending machine. 

Glass shatters on impact, and Wally drives his fist through until he hits something hard and comes back with bloody knuckles. 

Dick pulls Wally back before he can try anything else stupid. “Wally, man, _Jesus._ ” He stands there for a long moment, with a handful of Wally’s jacket gathered in his fist. “You feel better now?” he asks, incredulous.

“Can’t possibly feel worse,” Wally offers with a flick of acid, shoving Dick away. 

Dick steps back, placating. “She’ll be all right, Wally. You know Artemis. She’s got too much fight in her.”

There’s a long beat of silence. Wally picks at a large piece of glass embedded in his shredded knuckles and flicks it away. The tension in the air is thick enough to choke on. Dick doesn’t know how to find the right words in this situation, or even if there’s anything left to say. 

Wally decides for them. “What happened out there?”

“What?”

“Out there,” Wally repeats, turning around to face Dick. His voice is devoid of any emotion, even anger, but Dick knows better. “Artemis got shot and nearly died. How did that happen?”

Dick works his throat for a beat. “I—I don’t know, man. I wasn’t there. I sent her out through the rooftop, and by the time I was—”

“Who was the guy that was firing a gun for us?”

“I don’t know. It could have been their friendly fire.”

“He caused the distraction that let us get Artemis out,” Wally counters, pointedly. “You have a thirteenth man on this job?”

Dick blinks. “What? Wally, no. Of course not. We’ve only got twelve. You know that.”

“And you wouldn’t lie to me about that?” Wally asks. “’Cause we all know you’ve never lied about this stuff before, am I right? Look, Dick, just tell me the truth or—”

“Wally, there’s no thirteenth guy!”

Dick is shoved up against the wall before he even realizes that Wally’s moved. They call him Kid Flash because of his prowess behind a steering wheel, but he’s always had lightning fast reflexes any way you put it. 

“Go ahead,” Dick says, firmly. “Hit me if it’ll make you feel better. I know what you’re going through—”

“Like hell you do,” Wally hisses through gritted teeth. “That’s Artemis in there! She might not wake up. How the hell would you—”

Dick shoves Wally off him, snarling, “Because I went through the same thing with Barbara!” Deafening silence falls after that statement, but Dick doesn’t let it fall for long. “You were there, remember? When Jason died and Barbara was in the hospital, and they were telling me she’ll either die or be paralyzed for the rest of her life. You think I don’t know what you’re going through right now? To face losing the person you love most in this world? I know _exactly_ what you’re going through! I’ve _lived_ this nightmare!” 

The anger on Wally’s face drains. It’s always been volatile dealing with a Wally so distraught that his usual carefree attitude is buried underneath an avalanche of emotions, but it doesn’t take much to bring him back down to Earth either. They stare at each other, the choking silence between them obstinate, before Wally’s shoulders drop in recrimination. “God, Dick, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I can’t think. I can’t _breathe._ ”

“I know,” Dick offers, because he does.

He knows _exactly_ what Wally is feeling. All that anger and desperation? That feeling of impotent fury burning in his chest? Dick remembers the suffocating hours where he’d waited by Barbara’s bedside like it was just yesterday. He remembers the distinct antiseptic smell of the hospital and the smoky stench that clung to his own skin. Within days of being informed she’d never walk again, he’d spiraled into a vicious pattern of violence that eventually landed him in jail. So if Wally chooses to act out by shoving his fist through glass or his best friend through a wall, Dick isn’t one to complain. That's what best friends do.

“She’ll be fine,” Dick says, hoping it isn’t an empty lie. “Artemis will be okay.”

There’s a knock at the side of the cafeteria. “Sorry to interrupt,” Barbara says, sitting in her wheelchair with a look of contrition, “but Wally, you should know Jade and Roy are here with the kids.”

Wally blinks in surprise. “They are?”

“I was going to book them a flight, but it seems they were already in town,” Barbara informs. “I thought you might want family here for this.”

“Artemis wouldn’t,” Wally says, absently. His entire body looks so dejected that a gust of wind might knock him over. “She hates people fussing over her. She doesn’t get that that’s what family is _for._ ” 

“I figured you’d say that, which is why I called Bart over too. Your cousin will be here soon.”

Wally scrubs a hand through his hair. “Shit, he’s gonna boost a car and come flying up the coast with Jamie. Those boys have no sense whatsoever.”

“Yeah,” Barbara offers, wryly. “Don’t know where they got that from.”

“He doesn’t even have a driver’s license yet,” Wally adds on, making a face. “His dad is going to kill me.”

“Then they’ll have to get in line,” Dick says, clamping a hand over his shoulder. “C’mon, Wally, time to face the in-laws.”

“This is karma for shoving you into a wall, isn’t it?”

“And get that hand checked out while you’re at it,” Barbara adds on.

Grumbling to himself, Wally walks out of the cafeteria like a man marching to his death sentence. Though, given what Dick knows about Jade’s temperament, maybe it isn’t all that off it’s mark. Dick turns back to Barbara, shifting from his left foot to his right. He thinks through everything he said in the last few minutes. “How much of that conversation did you overhear?”

Barbara pauses, then admits, “Enough.”

Dick is pretty sure that normally he’d offer up a pithy comment, a quick retort, _something_ to lessen the weight hanging between them, because he’s pretty sure he confessed that Barbara was the love of his life or something back there; he doesn’t remember the precise words. Now he’s too emotionally drained to think of anything clever. He rubs a hand over his face tiredly, because it’s been a long, bitter night, and then he sees her staring, the less-than-casual assessment in her gaze, and yeah, sure, he knows what she’s seeing.

“Guess you were right,” he says, self-deprecating.

She wheels forward. “I often am,” she quips. “But this time, what about?”

“You warned me someone would get hurt in this operation. You were always hesitant because of that risk. Turns out you were right. It’s my fault all over again.”

For a beat, she doesn’t answer. Her face registers some emotion, but he can’t recognize it. The way her shoulders stiffen and face tightens, it can’t be good. “Is that what you think? That I came here to say _I told you so_? God, Dick, you still don’t get it after all this time. I never blamed you for this wheelchair. I never blamed you for what happened to Jason. That was _never_ your fault.”

“You’ve been angry with me for a long while—”

“I was angry because you _left,_ ” she cuts in. “I needed you, and you weren’t there. And that was…” she turns her head away, and it guts him to see tears springing in her eyes because he’s never been able to handle Barbara crying. Something in him twists and snarls into a tight knot, and he can’t breathe when that happens. “You have to let go of this martyrdom complex, Dick. It’s too much like Bruce—”

She cuts herself off, looking away briefly. 

“Babs?” he probes, because she looks ashamed for reasons he can’t define.

She shakes her head and wheels forward, facing him. “You can’t hold yourself accountable for everything that goes wrong. You can’t save everyone, Dick.”

“I can try,” he says, going for stubborn. 

But his throat tightens, because he knows how futile those efforts can be. Barbara doesn’t say anything to that at first, and the silence blooms out between them. The guilt of his past errors are heavy enough, but if Artemis gets added to that weight, he thinks it might tip the scales and the damning indictment might be too much for even him to handle. Wally would never forgive him. Dick would never forgive himself. 

Barbara must see these thoughts as they ride along the synapses of his psyche. “Oh, god, Dick,” she breathes, voice catching. Dick’s vision suddenly blurs. It feels like the weight of the entire day comes crashing down on him, and there have been too many things to go wrong and too many mistakes, and he needs just one moment, just one of reprieve. It isn’t entirely conscious when he walks forward and stumbles to his knees so they’re level with each other. He braces a hand on one of her wheelchair armrests, and she responds with him, threading her hand through his hair. She brushes her thumb against a half-formed bruise on his cheek, and he wants to kiss her. Wants it so desperately, but he knows that's too much, too soon. He doesn't want her to regret it. So, instead, he settles for an embrace of a different kind. He rests his head on her lap, and when he feels her fingers run through his hair in comfort, he closes his eyes. He abandons himself to white noise for a while.

They’ve always orbited each other, the two of them. Dick knows their past is thorny and their future is uncertain at best, but for that moment everything else bleeds away and it’s just him and her. Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon. The way it should be.

* * *

“Tell me if I should start coming up with alibis for your murder right now, because my husband is a cop and I’m fairly talented in the art of violence. Granted, I’m a pregnant woman the size of a whale, and I’ll likely have to enlist the help of one of your friends to babysit all of my other kids while it happens, but give me a reason and I swear they’ll find the remains of your desiccated corpse only when I _want_ them to. Now,” Jade strides forward, “what the hell happened to my sister?”

Wally looks at her, and he’s really too tired to deal with this. “Jade, normally I’d find this display of familial protective affection towards Artemis heartwarming, even if it is couched in disturbing homicidal terms, but I’m really not in the mood right.”

“Listen here, you little piece of—” Jade began, before Roy steps in. 

Roy is half a foot taller and by the looks of it, _stronger_ , but it clearly takes all his effort to pull his wife back. Wally watches as Roy attempts to calm her down, but there’s something in the family blood because Wally knows when Artemis gets like that, it’s impossible to get much composure over the situation.

“Hey, Uncle Wally,” little Lian mumbles, still half asleep as she rubs at her eyes. It reminds Wally that it’s actually approaching seven in the morning and he hasn’t slept in over thirty-six hours. “Is Aunt Artemis okay?”

Wally reaches down to pick her up, and even though she’s barely five years old at this point, and it’s only been a few weeks since he last saw her, he swears she’s heavier than normal. That could also be the exhaustion talking. “She’ll be fine,” Wally tells her, because that’s what you say to kids. “She’s just resting, Lian.”

Jade and Roy’s two other munchkins, a pair of twins at the age of three, are already passed out on the uncomfortably hard plastic chairs in the waiting room, doing that thing that only kids can do where they can go to sleep anywhere and virtually in any position. He sets Lian down beside her younger brother and sister, but she tugs him into the seat next to her and then crawls into his lap, asleep before he can even wrap his head around what's happening.

“Oh, cute,” Jade remarks. “Use my kid as a human shield.”

Wally rolls his eyes. 

It’s a few hours later before Bart and Jaime show up. Given the distance between Gotham and Metropolis, there should be no conceivable way the drive should take less than six hours, but Wally estimates they must have done it in a little less than four. “How many laws did you break getting here?” Wally asks, trying for a reprimanding tone, but it’s flat and unconvincing even to his own ears.

“None,” Bart says, raising his hand like a boy scout. “We were good citizens the entire way. You don’t need to worry about us, cuz. We’re here to help, not add to the stress factor!”

Wally switches his gaze to Jamie, patiently, and the boy caves in less than ten seconds flat. “Okay _hermano_ , Bart maybe broke a few speeding limits and possibly the sound barrier, but no one pulled us over.”

“Just tell me you didn’t steal the car?”

“Well,” Bart says, laughing a little awkwardly. “Depends on your definition of stealing.” 

He holds up a familiar set of car keys, and Wally blinks, snatching them out of the air because, “You took my _ride?_ ” His baby, his yellow ’69 Camaro, his first love. “You better not have scratched it up!” he warns.

“Relax, cuz. It’s perfectly good! Your car was totally _crash._ ”

_“You crashed my car?”_ Wally roars.

“What, no!” Bart gulps.

Jaime steps in, “ _Crash_ , as in slang, as in awesome. As in please don’t kill him because your car is okay. Forgive _ese_ here on his choice of words. We’ve been up all night.”

“We were just in a rush, okay?” Bart defends himself.

Jaime nods, helpfully. “We just wanted to be here for you. How’s Artemis doing?”

That calms Wally back down. “She’ll be fine,” he says again, because that’s what you tell teenagers.

The waiting room gets crowded. Bart and Jaime end up mixing company with Stephanie, Cassie and Tim. Lian slumbers half the morning away in Wally’s lap before Roy comes over and takes her off his arms. Wally almost wants to protests, because there is something comforting about the small warm weight of a child in his arms, but he can’t seem to formulate the words properly. Because he refuses a nurse, Zatanna grabs a first aid kit and patches up his hand. He must look like shit, because later on Jade hands him a cup of coffee, and either it’s a sign of a truce or, well, she’s poisoned it and this is the end. He figures she’d be more violent with her methods of execution, though, so he takes a liberal sip without thinking twice about it. Raquel and Jade spend a little while talking, and while a novice might think they’re bonding over pregnancy, Wally is not particularly disturbed or surprised to learn they’re talking about explosives instead.

He overhears Roy tell Zatanna, “I was in town for family,” but Wally knows his family is in Star City, but he’s too tired to call bullshit on it.

Time ekes by. Wally waits. There’s no sign of Artemis waking up. He waits some more. Some of the people leave to freshen up, assuring Wally that they’d be back in a few hours with food and fresh clothes. Wally barely hears them. Bart tries to engage him in conversation, talking a mile a minute, but Wally quickly begs off and goes to sit closer by Artemis’ bedside. Barbara forces him to eat something, and Dick tells him to get some rest. Wally refuses. 

No one disturbs him during the next few hours, not even the nurse that had earlier refused to offer any information to him because they could only inform family. Like he isn’t Artemis’ family? The thought enrages him. _Boyfriend_ is hardly a fitting title for what he is to her. His whole life he’s been running from things – from cops, from unwanted accountability, from anything that could be defined as a responsible, adult profession – but he’s never run from her. He’s spent so long thinking of Artemis as his bedrock, his constant, that he can’t bear the thought of what he might be without her. He finds himself fixating on that as morning turns to afternoon. 

“Sometimes I really _hate_ you, Artemis,” he finds himself saying, to her prone form. “I hate your stubbornness so damn much sometimes. I should be your husband. We should be _married._ We’re for life. I know you’ve figured that out by now, so why didn’t we just do it?”

For a beat, he legitimately wants an answer out of her, because he’s frayed and frustrated and on the verge of tears. He wants to shoot down her manifesto of reasons on why marriage is lame and kids are dull, because everyone knows they’re as domestic as can be and their garage is an orphanage to kids who all look to Artemis and Wally to lead them.

“I’d have married you a dozen times over by now,” he says, choking on the frustration, “but no. You won’t say yes because you’re scared it’ll change us, and I hate that about you too. That you’re letting fear get in the way of owning up to what we are. We’re already together _til death do us part_ , and you better believe I’m gonna be the first one to kick the bucket, so don’t you even _think_ about flat-lining on that bed. I won’t have it. I won’t. I know what I want out of life. And _kids._ God, I want kids. I want a truckload of kids. Let’s put your sister to shame with the amount of kids we have. I want them to have your looks and my brain. Or your brain and my looks. I don’t give a shit. I just want them with _you_.”

But he normally never brings it up because her fucked up childhood has left her with an insecurity about being a parent that’s a mile-wide. 

He could think about a dozen other things that he hates about Artemis Crock. That she took off the Kevlar vest even after she promised she wouldn’t. He knows she’d say, _I got shot in the arm, Wally. A vest wasn’t gonna help with that_ , and he hates how she’d think that would justify her recklessness.

But mostly he just really, really hates that she won’t wake up.

He scrubs a hand over his face, tears welling and sliding down his face. He lifts to his feet because he needs air, he needs space, he needs to get out of this claustrophobic room for a moment. But as soon as he turns to leave, right when his hand hits the doorknob, there’s a faint, croaked, _“Wally.”_

He freezes, then turns around to find Artemis’ eyes opening. He rushes to her side in an instant, gripping her hand as she coughs. He gets her water, he presses the button to call the nurse, he waits for Artemis to reorient herself to the land of the living, before she says, “I hate you too,” in a frail voice, with her lips upturning into a faint smile. 

He laughs in relief, not yet fully comprehending what it meant she’d overheard, but before he can say anything else to her, the door opens and the nurse comes in. “Get the doc,” he orders. “She’s awake!”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... and yeah, okay, this other scene inspired by [this comic strip.](http://irony-rocks.tumblr.com/post/42444770303) Apparently this was just one of those chapters!


	12. Chapter 12

Dick sighs in relief as he straightens his back, letting his muscles shift and his spine snap itself back into some semblance of a straight line. He scrubs a hand over his face wearily and decides he might need that third cup of coffee after all. He gathers a litter of cheap Styrofoam cups that have arranged themselves throughout the waiting room, the one they’ve taken over _completely_ , bypassing a passed out Bart and Jaime who have falling asleep adjacent to one other, mouth hanging open, and in the case of the former, drooling a little.

Dick tosses away the trash and heads for the cafeteria. On the way, he stumbles upon Roy and Barbara caught in a private conversation. He eavesdrops without even meaning to. “You need to call him,” Roy is saying. “Look, it’s not my place and god knows I don’t want to stick my nose into the middle of it. But he’s my partner, Babs. If you’re breaking up with the guy, at least tell him. Bard hasn’t heard a word from you in nearly a week and it’s driving him crazy. Which is driving _me_ crazy because the guy won't shut up about it.”

Barbara pauses, visibly thrown, and Dick thinks, _Jason Bard_. Of course. Barbara’s guy from that night he’d crashed her date. Dick hasn’t really thought a lot about the guy, because there’s not a lot of info to go on. He knows Jason Bard is a detective with the Gotham PD and Roy’s partner, but beyond that, there’s not a whole lot more. He doesn’t even know how long Barbara and Jason have been dating or if they’re particularly serious. It probably doesn’t say anything good about Dick that he’s elated to hear Barbara hasn’t been in contact with Jason pretty much since joining his merry little band of thieves, but screw it. Dick has never once hidden his intentions towards her, and he isn’t going to lie. The urge to perform a small two-step jive of happiness in the hidden corridor in _strong_.

That is, until Barbara says, “It isn’t like that, Roy. I just… I’ve been busy. I’ll call him up and calm him down. I’m not breaking up with him.”

“A phone call might not cut it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly showed up, the paranoid way he was acting these last few days. He knows you’re here with Dick.”

Barbara quiets for a beat. “What did you tell him about Dick?”

“I kept it vague, but he’s a detective, Babs. Jason knows how to put two and two together.”

“I told you, it’s not like that. Dick and I… we’re just… friends.”

“Yeah,” Roy comments, dubious.

Barbara sighs. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”

Roy holds his hands up like he’s walking away clean of the entire affair, but it’s Barbara that rolls off in a huff. Dick watches her wheel away, and something hits the pit of his stomach, a sinking feeling of going one step forward with her, only to be pushed back three.

“How long have you been standing there?” Roy asks, then turns to pin Dick with a knowing gaze.

Dick straightens, clearing his throat. “Plead the fifth, Officer?”

“That’s Detective,” Roy remarks.

Dick grins. “Of course.”

But then Roy pauses, at war with himself about something and then strides forward. “Look, I gotta know. What are you involved in, Dick?”

Dick sighs, because he knows exactly what Roy is asking about, but it’s too complicated to get into it with him. Besides, they’re both entirely too exhausted to deal with anything more complex than basic arithmetic. “At this moment? I’d love a deeply committed relationship with my bed.”

“I’m serious. I held off until Artemis was out of the woods, but now I want answers. That wasn’t a car accident. I’m a cop. I know when something doesn’t add up, and all you guys – here, in Metropolis? Don’t feed me any bullshit. What happened?”

Dick forces a smile as he drops to a nearby chair with a thud. In the many years he has known Roy, he has always had a temper that was one step short of exploding. He has no patience for bullshit, no tolerance for much of anything, in fact. When they were kids, Roy had folded into Dick’s life as if he had always been there, but the truth is, he’s always been apart too, his own one-man army. His decision to join the force when Dick’s path went in the opposite direction was just another sticking point. They’d stayed friends despite it, right up till that moment when Dick pleaded out to several counts of assault, including one with a deadly weapon, and their relationship had dwindled down to a handful of visits over the course of four years. He doesn’t blame Roy for that because in the end it was Dick that had acted out of line, but Dick isn’t in the mood to explain himself to a guy who hasn’t been around for the last few years either.

“Can’t this wait until later? I’ve had my fill of explosive arguments for the week, thanks.”

Roy’s jaw clenches. “You’re smarter than this, Dick. Learn from your mistakes.”

“I have.”

“And yet, here we are in a hospital. Artemis could have been _killed._ ”

“You think I don’t know that? You think I didn’t try to keep them out of this? I did! They—” he cuts himself off, because he’s explaining himself even when he doesn’t want to. “I don’t owe you any answers.”

“The hell you don’t—”

“Should I have my lawyer present for this conversation, Detective?”

The low blow lands, just like Dick had intended it. “You ungrateful son of a bitch,” Roy fumes. “If you had any idea what I’ve done for you guys, why I’m even in Metropolis in the first place—” he cuts himself off. “You know what? Screw you.”

“Done for me?” Dick blinks in confusion. “What have you done for me?”

“Nothing, _Dick_ ,” Roy seethes, in a tone that implies he might have meant the word with a lowercase _D_ rather than an uppercase one.

“Okay, wait,” Dick tries, but Roy is already striding away.

Dick sits there, entirely exhausted and utterly confused. Beyond raising the question of Roy’s reason of being here in Metropolis, Dick feels a little winded at the implication that Roy has been helping them in any way.

“That was rough, _ese_.”

Dick turns to spy Jaime standing awkwardly in the connecting corridor. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Since before Roy asked you that same question,” Jaime answers, sheepishly. He pauses. “Is Barbara really dating his partner?”

Agitation rises. “Look, Jamie, I’m really tired and I’m not in the mood to—”

“Yeah, yeah, cool, bro. No need to say anything else. I was just going to do some private business of my own.” Jaime thumbs at the men’s restroom, and quickly bids a retreat towards it.

It takes a few seconds for Dick to muster the energy to stand, but then he remembers his quest for another cup of coffee, even if it is a bitter brand of the hospital kind. He’ll grab an extra cup for Wally, who needs the fuel more than anyone. Artemis has spent majority of the day in and out of slumber, but the docs are optimistic about her diagnosis. She’ll be staying in the hospital for another day or two, and then have about a month of physical therapy after that, but she’ll recover. Unfortunately, the timeframe means she won’t be able to actively participate in the rest of the con.

If there even _is_ a con.

After the latest scare, Dick isn’t sure he wants to continue. The risk is too high. The reward of punishing Savage, Luthor and Black Manta is something he still intends on pursuing, but maybe his original plan had been better. He should have done this with Kaldur and no one else. The thought rings through his brain like clear church bells. Dick pulls out his phone and stares at it for a long beat. He shouldn’t risk bothering Kaldur while he’s undercover, but it’s been almost eighteen hours since Dick last heard anything from him. After a brief moment of debate, he decides it’s worth a risk of a quick text to check in.

He types it out quickly and hits send, holding his breath. It’s only a few seconds before he gets back an answer from Kaldur, _Still out on an errand._

It’s code, meaning he’s still with Savage.

 _Going well?_ Dick texts back.

 _Can’t talk. Got a headache. Might turn into a migraine._ Which means bad, bad news. Savage must be paranoid in the aftermath of the attempted burglary of his facility. He’s probably tripling his security. Dick curses under his breath, before Kaldur sends a follow up text. _TTYL._

The signature sign-off indicates that they would in fact only talk in person, and it’d be at least a day before Kaldur is able to pull himself away from Savage. Dick sits forward, frowning, feeling his stomach cave in. He doesn’t like the idea of Kaldur being on his own like that, adrift in a sea of enemies, but he’s been doing this for years and Dick trusts him to navigate through shark-infested waters. Still, he doesn’t like it one bit.

The responsibility of this all is getting to be too much. He’d underestimated a lot of things, apparently.

He gets the coffee, hightailing back to Artemis’ room to find an uplifting sight, for once. Wally and Artemis are engaged in the type of kissing that should make her heart-monitor overheat. This sort of love-struck, nauseating behavior that would normally make Dick troll ‘em or look respectfully the other way, depending on the mood, but instead he just smirks. They’re insanely lucky to have each other, and Dick finds himself happy and relieved for them. It’s amazing that they can still be this stupidly in love with each other even after all these years. They make love look _easy_.

“Ahem,” he clears his throat, finally, standing awkwardly at the doorway. “There’s impressionable children not far from here in the waiting room, y’know?”

Wally pulls back, but doesn’t break eye contact with Artemis. He flips Dick off without even glancing in his direction, and Artemis laughs.

“I come bearing gifts,” Dick tries, holding up the cup of coffee.

Wally zooms across the room so fast, it’s almost a blur. “Forget my love for Artemis. You’re my favorite person in the world right now.”

“Hussy!” Artemis calls from her bed.

Dick pulls up a chair and sits beside Artemis, and for a few blessed seconds, it feels like all is right with the world. “Damn meds,” she says through a yawn. “I’m glad they’re giving me the good stuff, but I can’t stay awake for longer than an hour.”

“You should be resting,” Wally insists.

“Look who’s talking,” Artemis grumbles. “Wally, you look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

“An exaggeration. I haven’t slept in _days_.”

“Oh, that’s much better,” she barks at him, glaring. “You need to rest, Wally.” She turns to Dick. “You mind helping me out here? Tell him he needs to rest. He should go back to the hotel. Earnestly, he _smells._ He needs a shower and a few hours of sleep. I’ll be fine without him constantly hovering over me like some Bela Lugosi freak. Tell Wally that, would you?”

Dick turns to Wally, casually adding, “What she said.”

“Thanks,” Artemis says, wryly, “Real convincing.”

Dick tries again, “Okay. Wally, she thinks you’re stupid and should go away.”

“That’s better,” Artemis hums, happily.

“I’ll leave the hospital when she does,” Wally declares to Dick. “Tell _her_ that.”

“Wally thinks you’re stupid too, but he’s staying.”

“You are the worst wingman _ever_ ,” Artemis declares. “Forget it, I’ll bring in the big guns and ask M’gann.”

Dick smiles, already feeling a small swell of pity for Wally when he goes up against that. “Look, I’ll send everyone else back to the hotel, okay? We’ll figure out some type of rotation and leave only around two people here to keep Wally company? If only because you pass out a lot and he might go crazy from boredom. Babs and I will take the first shift.”

“Oh, how generous of you,” Artemis says, knowingly. “Volunteering yourself and Babs like that? You’d suffer through long hours of her lonesome company just for little ol’ me?”

“I was hoping the head injury might have affected the part of your brain that controls sarcasm, but no dice, huh?”

“If anything,” Wally volunteers, “she gets worse when she’s tired and grumpy.”

“And being talked about like I’m not present in the room,” Artemis adds, glibly. “You’re still fussing, Wally. Everybody is fussing over me. I _hate_ it when people do that.”

“Deal with it,” Wally declares, unsympathetic. “There’s a waiting room full of people out there that love and care about your well being. Oh, the _horror_.” He pauses, briefly, then straightens. “Actually, in the case of your sister, the horror is a little bit more literal than one would think. Did you know she’s threatened to kill me seven times in the last twenty-four hours for letting you get hurt? The threats have been disturbingly detailed.”

Artemis offers a beaming grin. “She’s really warming up to you.”

Wally rolls his eyes.

Dick sips his coffee quietly and hides a grin behind his cup.

* * *

Jaime gets sent to the hotel with the first wave, and he’s never realized how much he misses out by spending all his time in an auto-garage, until he’s standing on the sixteenth floor of a lavish hotel that’s booked solid by Grayson. Jaime gets his own room and everything.

The room is opulent and fancy, and Jaime stands there for a beat, in torn jeans and a grease-stained shirt (he’d been rebuilding an engine when they’d gotten the call from Barbara), and he feels like maybe Grayson is up to something big if he’s shelling out cash for these type of digs. It’s obvious they’re running some sort of scheme, and it’d gone awry and gotten Artemis injured, but no one is telling him anything. They still see him and Bart as kids. Of course, he should adopt the same devil-may-care attitude that Bart does, ignoring the pink elephant in the room and just enjoying the luxuries of the moment. Jaime could totally raid the minibar and order at least six items off the room service menu. But something is unsettling about this entire venture.

Then, to add to the strangeness of the circumstances, a personal butler shows up. An honest-to-god personal butler.

“Alfred!” Stephanie squeals in delight, hugging him. “When did you get into town?”

“Good to see you too, Miss Brown. I flew in late last night.”

Tim and Cassie take turns hugging him. “Miss Cain,” Alfred breathes, tightly, through her hug. “You must remember these old bones are not in the same condition as they used to be.”

Cassie releases him, setting him on his feet and offering a smile of apology. Jaime stands there in awe. She’s half Alfred's size, but she’d lifted him clear off the ground at least a couple of inches. Jaime has no idea what to make of Cassie. He'd thought her a teenager like the rest of them, but then Tim had informed him that she was actually closer to twenty-one and the reserved persona was more... _cultural differences_ than anything. Jaime decides it's only a fraction of the truth. Cassie isn't so much reserved as she communicates in different ways than normal. He's just starting to pick up on that.

“What brought you here, Alfred?” Tim asks.

“The old manor was dreadfully drafty with no one there, and I figured my services might be of some use here in assisting Master Grayson and Miss Gordon. Judging by the state I found the hotel rooms, I see I wasn’t wrong. I’d ask if the people staying on this floor were raised by wolves, but it’d be a particularly self-deprecating comment giving I know I’ve had a hand in the upbringing of several occupants.”

Tim winces. “That’s not our fault, actually. We can’t have maid service up on this floor because Dick is paranoid of—” Stephanie elbows him in the chest, pointedly. “Erm, we just don’t want strangers and hotel staff up here. The mess sorta accumulated.”

“And clearly,” Alfred says, primly, “I have taught you nothing about picking up after yourselves.”

Stephanie quickly changes the subject. “Have you spoken to Bruce lately?”

There’s a pause. “He is still in China, attending to his business. He sends his regards.”

Jaime watches all three faces of Stephanie, Tim and Cassie fall a little.

The rest of the evening unfolds quickly. Alfred insists on cooking everyone’s dinner for them in the kitchen facilities afforded to the largest suite on the floor. Even though it completely ignores the legitimate option of room service, Jaime gets the feeling it might be useless to ague against the older gentlemen. Alfred takes the order of everyone in the group, from pasta to pizza to Bart’s unspecified order of _eggs, lots of ‘em,_ and then Jaime watches with a quaint sort of fascination as Alfred sets about making everything from scratch. He flips the last egg onto the platter filled with beans and sausage and, with a tight flick of his wrist, sets the food down on a wide platter. Bart runs by and grabs the plate, hollering, “heads up!” before the plate zooms down the counter to land in front of the vacant spot beside Jamie, where it spins dizzily, revolving at least half a dozen times before coming to a impressive halt.

They dig in, and damn. The food is good.

A few hours after that, the teenagers make a plan to spend the evening doing tourist-y things, because apparently the Wayne kids hadn’t really been given a chance to explore the city much. Which raised the question of just what, exactly, they had been doing for the last week, but Jaime tries not to stick his nose into it. He gets the feeling it wouldn’t really go anywhere because they seem like a tightlipped sort of bunch. He means specifically Cassie, who he’s seen utter maybe three words over the course of a day, but even Stephanie, who is friendly and can blabber away at a mile a minute, never really gives any details about what they’ve been up to. Not even an accidental slipup.

They’re dressed and ready for the night, emerging out on the side streets of the hotel, when Jaime remembers he forgot his cell. “Be back in a few,” he hollers to the others, speeding off. He cuts through the parking garage for a faster way to the hotel elevator, when he sees Roy Harper in the back talking to some guy on a bike.

“You shouldn’t be here, Jason,” Roy is saying. “It’s not the right time yet. Let things calm down a bit.”

“I’m tired of waiting. I’m sick of it. Let’s just get everything out in the open.”

“Listen to me—”

“I never asked for your help. You stuck your nose where it didn’t belong.”

“Excuse me for giving a damn,” Roy says, glaring. “What was I supposed to do, Jason?”

_Jason._

Jaime searches his memory and remembers overhearing the name of Roy’s partner, the same one that Barbara is dating. Bard. Jason Bard. He takes a long, measuring look at the guy, and maybe Jaime doesn’t know Dick Grayson that well, having only met him in the last few weeks, but he finds himself liking the guy and rooting for him. Bard is stiff competition, though. Lean, muscled, a pretty boy, even. There’s also a slight bad-boy persona to him that makes girls usually go crazy, surprising for a cop, but maybe that’s just the biker jacket talking? The motorcycle is a beauty, too. A 1098 SP Ducati in black. Jaime gets distracted a little by the ride, blocking out the details of the tense conversation because he’s always got a thing for engines and the Ducati has some of the best. It must easily have 170 horsepower.

“You see something you like, kid?”

Jaime blinks, caught like some peeping tom. “What?”

Bard smirks, walking over. “You work at Wally and Artemis’ garage, right? You’re the whiz kid with a reputation.”

“Don’t know what my reputation is, _hombre._ I just like fixing things.”

“That’s what they say,” comes the reply, amused.

“You’re Barbara’s boyfriend?” Jaime asks. “She’s not here right now. She’s at the hospital.”

“With Dick?” Bard asks, pointedly.

“Jason,” Roy warns, tightly, from the back. “Don’t.”

Bard ignores him, grabbing his helmet. There’s something written on the back of it, but Jaime can’t read it. He watches in bewilderment as the guys trade a stiff exchange of looks, and the tension between them is so thick that Jaime thinks about stepping back a bit in case things come to a blow. They sure aren’t acting like partners. But then, idly, Jason climbs onto his bike and starts the engine. The roar is almost deafening. He secures his helmet and flashes Jaime another look.

“Nice meeting you, kid. See you around.”

Then the bike takes off, gunning for the garage exit at a fast speed. Jaime barely has time to make out the words on the back of the fire-engine red helmet, a personalized branding. It says two words in black cursive script.

_Red Hood._


End file.
